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Most provisional ballots to be in final tally

Results are due Monday; debate on process lingers

By Myung Oak Kim, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published November 20, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Most of the nearly 51,000 provisional ballots in the 2008 election are expected to be included in final results due to the secretary of state's office Monday.

But the debate over whether election workers properly used this voting method won't be over soon.

Reports from several large counties and Colorado's record of generally approving provisionals indicates the vast majority will be accepted this time around.

Since Nov. 4, county officials have been poring over regular ballots, vote tallies and provisional ballots cast on Election Day and during the two weeks of early voting.

Provisional ballots are given to voters who encounter registration problems at the polls or who signed up to vote by mail but didn't get a ballot or didn't send it in.

They have been used in Colorado since 2002 and require additional paperwork and are examined after Election Day to determine whether the voter is eligible.

County election officials were supposed to decide by Nov. 18 which provisional ballots to accept and which to toss out.

It was unclear Wednesday whether all counties were finished.

The secretary of state's office won't collect final provisional ballot figures until Monday.

Meanwhile, the state will soon scrutinize at least 55 rejected provisional ballots, said Richard Coolidge, spokesman for Secretary of State Mike Coffman.

The ballots were among those cast by about 400 people whose names had been purged from the registration rolls for a variety of reasons, such as moving to another county, but showed up to vote.

A total of 44,000 voters were canceled from the rolls since May.

The closer look by the state of any rejected ballots from that pool is required as a result of a lawsuit against Coffman alleging the voters should not have been dropped. Coffman has said the removals were proper.

"Right now the focus is to get through this part of the process to make sure that every voter who was on that list and tried to vote gets their ballot counted," said Jenny Flanagan, executive director of Colorado Common Cause, a plaintiff in the suit.

Flanagan said her organization plans to review how provisional ballots were handled.

She contends that these ballots are not used consistently across counties and that many voters should have gotten a regular ballot at the polls but were inappropriately forced to vote a provisional ballot.

Colorado has historically accepted more provisional ballots than the national average.

In November 2004, 76 percent of the 51,529 provisional ballots cast in the state were counted. The national average was 64 percent.

In November 2006, 85 percent of the 26,455 provisional ballots cast in Colorado were counted. The national average was 79.5 percent.

On Wednesday, several major counties reported high acceptance rates of provisional ballots.

Douglas County accepted about 2,800 provisionals, or 88 percent of those cast, and Denver accepted 92 percent of 9,177.

Almost 87 percent of provisional ballots were accepted in Arapahoe County.

That's more than 5,400 votes, which were critical in deciding the tight state Senate District 26 race.