Last week, we were highly critical of Pueblo County Clerk and Recorder Gilbert “Bo” Ortiz and his elections staff, blaming the significant delays in vote counting on poor preparation, specifically a poor decision to purchase software inadequate to the task of counting Pueblo’s numerous ballot styles. It appears we were a bit premature. As it turns out, there were all sorts of factors leading up to the election vote count problems. As reported in Wednesday’s Chieftain, state election officials essentially said Ortiz and his team had no way of knowing that the computer system would bog down on the morning of Election Day. They said they had approved the number of ballots, the way issues were presented on them, and the purchase of the Dominion Express System by the county. Significant tests — more than actually required — were conducted prior to the election, and there were no indications that a disaster lie ahead.
In fact, officials of the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office said Pueblo County would have had to test the county’s election system with 50,000-60,000 test ballots to discover the limited database on the Dominion system. In other words, the county almost would have had to conduct an entire test “election.”
Dwight Shellman, county support manager for the Secretary of State’s Office, said the limited database was not mentioned in any of the vendor’s documentation about the Microsoft SQL Express system and that neither state nor county officials were aware of it — until the computer server stopped working on Election Day.
Full Article: Election problems | The Pueblo Chieftain.