Aurora voter Jesse Griffin didn’t think twice about the ballot she had submitted in this year’s election until a volunteer for Aurora mayoral candidate Omar Montgomery showed up at her door this week.
There was a problem with Griffin’s ballot, and she hadn’t yet received a letter from the county clerk’s office explaining how to fix it.
“I would have been devastated to find out my vote wasn’t counted,” Griffin said. The process to verify her identification and sign a voter affidavit was easy, she said.
Volunteers for at least one candidate for Aurora mayor are still out talking to voters a week after Election Day, when other races across Colorado have long since been called.
The votes cast in the five-way race, which appeared to be in former U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman’s favor Nov. 5, ended up being too close to call when the three counties involved finished their main ballot counts Thursday.
Coffman was leading Montgomery, the NAACP chapter president, by fewer than 300 votes.
And there were still about 2,300 votes out in Arapahoe, Adams and Douglas counties combined — all counties that can claim part of Aurora — that needed signature and identification verification before they could be counted. There were also additional military and overseas ballots that needed to be counted as well as ballots that were transferred from various county offices. However, many of the uncounted ballots are probably not from Aurora.
So Montgomery volunteers started knocking on doors again, trying to cure, or correct, signature and identification discrepancies, on hundreds of ballots that weren’t counted.
Problems that can be corrected in Colorado within eight days after an election include a missing ID photo with the original ballot, a missing signature or a signature that doesn’t match another on file. To fix the issue, a voter has to fill out and sign an affidavit, take a picture of his or her ID and submit the affidavit and photo to the county clerk’s office by the deadline.
In the days since the election, the Arapahoe County Democratic headquarters has been abuzz, with dozens of volunteers signing up for training sessions on helping voters cure ballots and returning the information to the Arapahoe and Adams county elections offices.
As Montgomery walked around the office Tuesday afternoon talking to volunteers, he said he didn’t expect this kind of action. He thought he would win Nov. 5, but “it’s been humbling to see the response from the community.”
Coffman’s campaign declined to confirm if it had its own volunteers out trying to cure ballots but has said it won’t call the race until all ballots are counted.
Voters have until midnight Wednesday to correct any errors and provide documentation to their county elections offices, and it could be at least Thursday before Aurora residents know who their next mayor is.
How many voters go to the trouble of curing their ballots is a whole different question, but many voters do, according to the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office.
“In an election, even a low-interest one that’s not a close race, at least about one-third of ballots do get cured because people want their vote counted,” spokesperson Serena Woods said.
To win the race, Montgomery estimates that his campaign needs 300 to 400 ballots cured, though he acknowledged the numbers could change. His job until Wednesday night at midnight is to welcome volunteers, make food runs and offer support.
“To be in a situation where you don’t have a lot of control is a little foreign to me,” he said, laughing.
Campaign volunteer Genevieve Swift asked Montgomery to take a selfie with her in the office Tuesday afternoon — she wanted to prove to some voters that she really was working with the campaign to fix ballot discrepancies. Though the Denver resident did not canvass for Montgomery before the election, when she saw newly elected Denver Public Schools school board member Tay Anderson talking about ballot-curing for Montgomery, she jumped in.
“When you find people and leaders you believe in, they create a following,” she said. “Omar is one of those leaders.”
Swift attended a training session, got a list of voters that needed to fix discrepancies and began knocking on doors. Some had already fixed their ballots, but others were grateful for the help, she said.
@OmarForAurora @BySajaHindi #ouraurora https://t.co/KJsxVDbfdw pic.twitter.com/CoPwCATOfB
— G L Graham (@Ally4Change) November 12, 2019
Ballots can be cured via email, fax, text or in person. For more information, go to arapahoevotes.com, adamsvotes.com or douglasvotes.com.
