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Blunder detours voting for RTD

Supplementary ballot for board seat being sent to 4,820 in southwest Denver

Kevin Flynn, Rocky Mountain News

Published October 31, 2006 at midnight

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The battle among four candidates for an open seat on the Regional Transportation District board of directors is the banner race this year for the public transit agency.

But you wouldn't know it in far southwest Denver.

Because of an error by the Colorado Secretary of State's Office, the contest doesn't appear there on absentee ballots or voting machines.

To make up for the oversight, the Denver Election Commission is being forced to mail out new supplementary ballots, featuring only the race for the District N seat on the RTD board, to the 4,820 registered voters in five precincts.

Although Secretary of State Gigi Dennis' office takes the fall for the gaffe, city election officials also missed the omission.

It was caught last week after early voting had begun.

"The secretary of state certified the ballot for Denver County without that race on it," said Alton Dillard, spokesman for the Denver Election Commission. "The special mail ballot we're doing just for that race will be tabulated on Election night."

Dana Williams, spokeswoman for the secretary of state, said the root of the error happened two years ago, when the precinct lists for the 15 RTD districts were updated.

"Unfortunately, the list did not have updated information about the five precincts falling in Denver," Williams said.

The patchwork solution is the latest misstep that Denver voters will have to work around.

The election commission's voting machine supplier, Sequoia Voting Systems, mistakenly printed most of the absentee ballots with transposed "Yes" and "No" boxes for state Referendum F, which changes how recalls are conducted.

On most ballots, "No" appears above "Yes," the opposite of the usual style and different from all the other ballot questions. Others were sent with "Yes" above "No."

Because of the mistake, Denver election workers will have to separate the absentee ballots to avoid incorrectly counting the results.

Sequoia also printed the return envelopes for absentee ballots with the wrong price for postage - 63 cents, as opposed to the correct 87 cents. The Postal Service has said it will deliver all the ballots, and the city will ask Sequoia to pay the difference.

For the RTD District N race, the special ballots were mailed during the weekend to Denver voters in the five precincts generally bounded by Quincy and Belleview avenues, Wadsworth Boulevard and Kipling Street.

That little sliver of Denver has long been attached to RTD's south Jefferson County seat, which extends to Conifer and Evergreen. The number of Denver voters is small potatoes compared with the 114,000 Jefferson County voters eligible in District N.

Incumbent Stephen Millard is term-limited. All four candidates - Bruce Daly, Bob Hoban, Rich Mahan and Don Moore - live in the mountain areas.