Ballot Processing and Election Security

Boulder County offers same-day voter registration, allowing voters to register and cast a ballot on Election Day. This not only makes voting more convenient for new residents or those who have moved, but it also serves as a backup in the unlikely event of a disruption to the voter registration system.

The county participates in Colorado’s statewide voter registration database, SCORE, which is managed by the Secretary of State in partnership with counties. SCORE streamlines voter registration and sets consistent security standards across the state. Access to the system is tightly controlled: all users must verify their identity with multi-factor authentication, use individual accounts, and access the system only from county-approved devices.

To keep voter information accurate, Boulder County regularly updates the registration list using multiple data sources, including motor vehicle records, death records, change-of-address notifications, law enforcement records, and naturalization databases. Additionally, all systems accessing SCORE comply with state virus protection and malware detection standards, ensuring that voter registration data remains secure and accurate.

Boulder County Elections oversees strict testing and quality control of the ballot printing process. Our protocols go far beyond what is required by Secretary of State rule or state statute.
Examples of Ballot Printing Quality Control
Quality control processes that are conducted by the print vendor with oversight by Boulder County Election team members include (but are not limited to):

• Ballot print alignment: Making sure all ballot styles are correctly printed, using a see-through mylar overlay to inspect every portion of the ballot and make sure all the text and target boxes are where they should be.
• Checking fold lines: Making sure ballot fold lines are where they should be.
• Verifying ballot styles: Making sure the right ballot styles are printed and that no files were mixed up/combined, etc.
• Ensuring accurate ballot insertion: 2D bar codes are used on ballots and ballot envelopes to ensure that the ballot style inserted is correct for each voter.

This quality control work is done at the printer, prior to further testing of the ballots at our office through the ballot processing and voting system equipment.

Before every election, Boulder County Elections conducts a pre-election Logic and Accuracy Test (LAT). During the LAT, each type of ballot, including mail, in-person, and audio ballots, is tested to ensure that equipment correctly scans each ballot and accurately counts ballots of all types.

Every county in Colorado conducts a pre-election LAT, however, we are one of the only counties that uses live ballots during our LAT. This means we test vote on ballots pulled from the actual print run of ballots that will be mailed to voters, versus having the printer print a separate set of ballots to be used just for testing. We then run the ballots through our scanners and use our voting system software to ensure everything is calibrated correctly and tabulating properly.

The LAT is open to the public and conducted by a team of Elections staff and representatives from both major political parties.

“All-Options” Voting
Voters are sent a ballot in the mail, which they can return by mail, in-person at a Vote Center or election office, or to a 24-hour drop box (the mandatory minimum number of drop boxes is mandated in state election statute). If voters choose to vote in-person or need a replacement ballot for any reason, they may visit a Vote Center to vote up to and through Election Day.

Paper Ballots
Voters cast their vote either with a paper ballot (same as a mail ballot) or with a ballot marking device. Ballot marking devices are compliant with the accessibility requirements of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and the Federal Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines (VVSG), and also can allow voters to vote a Spanish language ballot.

Importantly, these devices assist the voter with marking their choice but do not electronically record the votes. Each device has its own printer that prints the ballot once the voter has verified their ballot choices onscreen. This paper ballot is deposited by the voter into a secure ballot box before leaving the Vote Center. Only physical, paper ballots are used and counted in Boulder County.

Signature Verification
After a ballot is received in our Ballot Processing Center, the signature on the ballot envelope is reviewed and compared to the signature(s) on file in the voter’s registration record. If an initial reviewer can’t match the signatures, the ballot/envelope is sent to a bi-partisan team for review. If this team can’t confirm the signatures match, the voter is notified and has a window of time to “cure” (or fix) the issue in order to have their ballot counted. If a voter does not respond, the ballot is not counted, and the case is turned over to the District Attorney for investigation.

Ballots cast in a Vote Center do not go through the signature verification process. Instead, voters must show identification first, in order to vote in person.

Counting Your Vote
Once your signature has been verified, your mail ballot goes on to be removed from its envelope by a team that ensures your confidentiality is maintained. Mail ballots and ballots cast in person then go on to be scanned by our voting machines and counted.

Vote Center Security
Each location hosting a Vote Center provides access to secure rooms for voting equipment. All critical equipment is secured with chain-of-custody seals and systematically tracked. After hours, the rooms are securely locked and voting equipment is sealed and stored to ensure election integrity.

Ballot Drop Box Security
Each 24-hour ballot drop box is under 24-hour video surveillance from the time the box opens for voter ballot return until it is closed at the end of an election. All boxes remain locked throughout the election period, accessed only by bipartisan teams for ballot collection which occurs on a regular schedule during an election. Additionally, all ballot processing areas of our office are under surveillance 24-hours a day.

Bipartisan Teams
By state law, Vote Centers are run by bipartisan election judges. Bipartisan election judges also handle ballot collection from ballot boxes and 24-hour drop boxes. They also handle all ballot adjudication, working together to understand a voter’s intent when a ballot is poorly marked or contains corrections.

Chain-of-Custody
To make sure no tampering occurs, chain-of-custody is carefully documented and maintained for equipment used at Vote Centers, including laptops (used to access the Secretary of State’s voter database, assign vote credit, and print ballots), ballot marking devices, and printers.

Additionally, chain-of-custody is also documented and maintained for ballot boxes used at Vote Centers and containers used to collect ballots from 24-hour drop boxes.

Our voting system is the equipment and software used to create ballots, capture votes, and tabulate results. The voting system we use is­­ called Dominion, one of the Colorado Voting Systems selected by the state after a rigorous public input process. The use of uniform voting systems across the state improves sustainability, service, collaboration, and support for counties and voters.

The voting system is not connected to the internet and there are no updates to the voting system once the trusted build is applied. The trusted build is the vendor software that is tested and certified by the Secretary of State’s office for election use.

Boulder County protects its voting systems with strict physical, technical, and procedural safeguards. All equipment is housed in secure, badge-controlled facilities with 24/7 video monitoring, and only staff with a defined need are granted individual user credentials that meet state standards for password security. Voting system files are regularly backed up and stored securely, with redundant hardware in place to prevent data loss. In addition, annual criminal background checks are required for all staff who access the voting system or voter data, ensuring the highest level of integrity and accountability.

To ensure voting system tabulation accuracy, a statewide risk-limiting audit is conducted after each election. This process compares a sample of hand marked paper ballots to the digital record of the voting system’s reading of those ballots.

How it Works

The tabulation system creates a Cast Vote Record (CVR) – a digital record of each recorded vote on each ballot at the time the voting system reads the ballot. After ballot processing is initially finished, we submit our CVR to the Secretary of State’s office. They use a random seed (generated by rolling 20 ten-sided dice during a public meeting) to generate a list of unique individual ballots for each county to use in the audit. These ballots are retrieved by county staff, a process overseen by a bipartisan audit board. The audit board then enters the votes from these ballots into the Secretary of State’s open-source RLA tool to be compared with the CVR. If any differences are found, additional audits are conducted until the results meet the required confidence level. This process ensures, with a high degree of certainty, that the final election outcomes are correct.

Every county in Colorado participates in the RLA, except for small counties that count their ballots by hand.

To learn more about the Colorado Risk-Limiting Audit, visit the Secretary of State’s Audit Center, read this Politico story on the implementation of RLAs, or check out this Colorado Public Radio story.