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Denver officials to review ballot procedures after election

By Daniel J. Chacon, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published October 29, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Denver elections officials pledged Tuesday to review their procedures to see if they could have done anything differently after their vendor, Sequoia Voting Systems, failed to deliver more than 18,000 mail-in ballots.

The review will begin after the presidential election because the city is busy preparing.

But Denver Elections Director Michael Scarpello said the ballot problem shows that his office needs to do a better job of verifying the information being provided by vendors.

"I'm not above questioning our own procedures," he said.

Sequoia took the blame after 18,055 mail-in ballots went undelivered. That is about 7,000 more mail-in ballots than were originally thought to be missing.

"Sequoia made an unfortunate mistake with a portion of Denver's absentee ballots that we produced and mailed," Michelle Shafer, a company spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.

Shafer has said that a "technical problem with the data file we used to prepare this batch of ballots" caused the mistake.

On Tuesday, she said it was "difficult to elaborate" on the problem. But city officials said they want a better explanation.

"I think we need a very thorough explanation," City Council President Jeanne Robb said during the council's general government committee meeting.

Clerk and Recorder Stephanie O'Malley, who oversees the Elections Division, said she plans to have a serious conversation with Sequoia after the election.

"We'll determine if there will be a future relationship with this vendor," she said.