Coloradans sign up to be election workers in record numbers, clerks say

Colorado’s coun­ty clerks have wor­ried the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic would leave them short on elec­tion work­ers, since the old­er folks who tend to sign up to run vot­ing cen­ters, process mail-in bal­lots and ver­i­fy sig­na­tures are the ones most at risk.

But oth­er Col­oradans have stepped up — in a big way.

“We’ve seen a remark­able response. We’ve have had hun­dreds per coun­ty,” said Pam Ander­son, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Col­orado Coun­ty Clerks Association.

She and oth­ers charged with recruit­ing work­ers to fill elec­tion judge slots say they’re see­ing peo­ple from a broad­er range of ages and back­grounds express inter­est, either direct­ly or through a form on the Col­orado sec­re­tary of state’s web­site. The major par­ties also will soon send clerks lists of poten­tial work­ers, which get priority.

It’s all part of a process that aims to keep mul­ti­ple sets of eyes — from dif­fer­ing polit­i­cal back­grounds — on each step of the process to ensure the Nov. 3 elec­tion will be run fair­ly and transparently.

In Den­ver, more than 550 appli­ca­tions to be an elec­tion judge came in Tues­day alone, large­ly due to the fact it was Nation­al Poll Work­er Recruit­ment Day. That pushed the county’s total to more than 4,000, said Eliz­a­beth Lit­tlepage, the Den­ver Elec­tions Division’s elec­tion judge coordinator.

At this time four years ago the divi­sion hadn’t even hit 100 elec­tion judge appli­cants yet.

In south­west Colorado’s La Pla­ta Coun­ty, home to Duran­go, Clerk and Recorder Tiffany Park­er said the “awe­some response” so ear­ly means the elec­tion should have ample staffing.

A like­ly fac­tor is the fact that so many peo­ple have been out of work — and look­ing for ways to make extra mon­ey. The posi­tions are mul­ti­day com­mit­ments, pay­ing at least $10 an hour but often quite a bit more.

There’s also high inter­est in this par­tic­u­lar elec­tion, offi­cials said, along with extra pub­lic scruti­ny on elec­tion secu­ri­ty in the wake of base­less claims made about mail vot­ing by Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump this summer.

Colorado’s sta­tus as a mail-vot­ing state means it must recruit far few­er elec­tion judges than states with tra­di­tion­al Elec­tion Day polling places. But it still needs dozens of them in small coun­ties and hun­dreds in larg­er ones.

“We haven’t seen some of the same impacts that oth­er states have seen,” Ander­son said, “but we’re cer­tain­ly contingency-planning.”

Den­ver offi­cials are seek­ing to hire about 1,050 elec­tion work­ers — near­ly dou­ble the 590 hired in 2016 — because of the need to staff 10 addi­tion­al vot­ing cen­ters and to make pan­dem­ic-relat­ed changes, includ­ing the use of stag­gered shifts down­town for bal­lot-pro­cess­ing clos­er to Elec­tion Day.

The strong­ly left-lean­ing city and coun­ty still faces the peren­ni­al chal­lenge of recruit­ing enough Repub­li­cans, while some GOP-heavy coun­ties face the flip side of that problem.

So far, GOP vot­ers account for a small frac­tion of Denver’s appli­ca­tions — Lit­tlepage said she would need 234 more to achieve par­i­ty with Democ­rats and unaf­fil­i­at­ed vot­ers. The Den­ver Repub­li­can Par­ty is try­ing to recruit both elec­tion judges and poll-ers.

“It’s always a con­cern if we can’t staff our full quo­ta — we want to make sure we can do that,” par­ty Chair­woman Kristi­na Cook said, adding: “We do want to par­tic­i­pate and show we are part of this com­mu­ni­ty, and part of that is step­ping up to be part of the elec­tion process.”

Anoth­er chal­lenge as the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion approach­es: Some small­er clerk’s offices are cramped, Ander­son said, and may hire few­er elec­tion judges than nor­mal to main­tain safe dis­tanc­ing. That could slow bal­lot-pro­cess­ing times.

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