Questions continue to swirl around activists’ complaints regarding irregularities in the Boulder County election process, and while the secretary of state has largely brushed aside the concerns, a local elections official says the clerk and recorder’s office will take them seriously. Boulder Weekly reported in early September that there was evidence that ballots could be traced back to individual voters, and election concerns have snowballed ever since. But in a Dec. 31 letter accepting the county’s vote totals, Deputy Secretary of State Suzanne Staiert dismissed most of the allegations outlined in a Nov. 26 report written by the majority of the local canvass board, which declined to certify the results of the election.
That majority, namely two Republicans and two American Constitution Party members, has been at odds with Clerk and Recorder Hillary Hall ever since the four began meeting without her blessing in late September and started questioning processes that Hall, a Democrat, said was outside their purview.
Their complaints include not being provided with detailed ballot information required by the secretary of state’s rules, observations that signatures were being verified by election workers in as little as 2.5 seconds each, watchers’ reports about an unreliable sorting machine and being denied access to certain election activities.
For the most part, Staiert said in her Dec. 31 letter, the complaints fell outside the scope of her office’s investigation and were not addressed because they would not have affected the outcome of the election. But she pledged to work with Hall’s office “to ensure compliance” with election rules.
Full Article: Doubts still plague Boulder’s election results despite Colorado ruling.