Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman checked in on the Pitkin County Clerk and Recorder’s Office on Friday in anticipation of the Nov. 4 election, when voters will tackle one of the longest and most complicated ballots in state history.
In addition to 18 state ballot measures and the presidential election, 12 local questions are expected to be posed to Pitkin County voters.
“I’m very concerned,” Coffman said Friday. “There’s a confluence of two forces: One is a very long ballot of state and local issues. On top of that, Colorado is in the eye of the storm in the presidential election. The nominees of both parties are working very hard in the state of Colorado, and Colorado could very well decide the fate of the country. So I want to make sure everything is going well.”
Coffman’s visit to Aspen came the day after the unexpected resignation of Colorado Director of Elections Holly Lowder. But Coffman said voting will not be adversely affected by her departure.
“She retired,” Coffman said. “The deputy elections director [Wayne Munster, who took Lowder’s job Thursday] was running the day-to-day operations in the elections division, anyway. So that didn’t change. The timing was actually pretty good for us.”
Coffman is in the middle of a statewide swing through Colorado’s 64 counties, meeting with the Clerk and Recorder in each. He said Pitkin County clerk Janice Vos Caudill has “done a magnificent job” and stayed ahead of the curve in preventing Election Day hiccups.
Vos Caudill sent out 12,000 information cards to county voters in September, informing them where to vote and encouraging them to update their address and personal information.
The voter registration deadline is Oct. 6.
Vos Caudill has stressed the importance that Pitkin County voters not only register before then, but make sure their information is up to date. “If you don’t have the correct information and you go to the wrong voting place on election day then you have to go back to our office, correct it, and then go back out,” Vos Caudill said yesterday.
With the extra long ballot — the biggest in Colorado since 1912 — election officials are preparing for voters taking extra time in the voting booth. Coffman said every voter who arrives at the polls by 7 p.m. will be able to cast a ballot. (In 2004, the last ballot in the nation was cast in Douglas County, Colo., after 1 a.m.).
But they are encouraging voters to take advantage of early mail-in voting.
“It is such a long and complicated ballot, and [by casting a mail-in ballot, voters] have the opportunity to deliberate in the comfort of their home with the blue book in front of them ... and take their time to make a decision. I think there is a real advantage to voting by mail.”
Early voters will also have their votes counted and reported earlier than those who go into voting booths on Election Day. Coffman has authorized the clerks statewide to release the mail-in and absentee votes tallied after 7 p.m. on election night.
“That will give Colorado and the nation an indication of where Colorado is headed,” Coffman said. “It will take much longer than that to get through the unofficial tally of the rest of the ballots.”
Coffman himself will be on the ballot in Colorado’s 6th U.S. Congressional District. In August, he won the Republican primary to take over that seat from Rep. Tom Tancredo. But with his general election victory all but assured in that solidly conservative district, Coffman says he will be focusing on his non-partisan Secretary of State duties between now and election day, instead of campaigning.
andrew@aspendailynews.com
