El Paso County Clerk and Recorder's Office still processing thousands of ballots

Nov. 9—The El Paso County Clerk and Recorder's Office was still processing about 70,000 ballots on Wednesday after voters submitted a record 100,000 ballots on Tuesday, Election Day, officials said.

"People really moved on the last day to either return their ballot by mail or vote in person," said outgoing Clerk and Recorder Chuck Broerman, who won his race to become the next county treasurer, unofficial voting results show.

The record number of ballots submitted via drop-box or in person on Tuesday largely exceeded the 68,000 ballots returned on Election Day in 2021, he said. Election officials were working Wednesday and anticipated continuing work on Thursday to sort, verify and officially count the remaining ballots, he said.

"There is some time lag between when (a ballot) comes in the door and when it's verified," Broerman said.

Though some former Republican candidates and community members have encouraged voters to cast their ballots in person on Election Day, making disputed claims that Colorado's mail-in balloting system is susceptible to fraud, Broerman attributed the late submission of such a large number of ballots instead to the considerable number of races and questions on the ballot. El Paso County voters decided a slew of congressional, state and local races as well as state and local initiatives on the largest ballot in 34 years.

"These were not easy issues to decide," Broerman said. "You had to really dig into the ballot and research the initiatives."

The push from some community members to return to in-person voting "didn't alter people's patterns," Broerman added. About the same number of people voted in person locally on Tuesday as did in the 2018 midterm election, he said.

El Paso County saw 13,366 in-person voters on Tuesday. Of those voters, 5,338 were unaffiliated, 5,672 were Republicans, 1,975 were Democrats and 381 were voters affiliated with various third parties.

A surge of voters hit polling stations across the county from 4 to 6 p.m. Tuesday. For example, lines at Centennial Hall on South Cascade in Colorado Springs were moving about one step every 10 minutes, voter Justin Siegel said. People were still finishing up at the location even after polls closed.

And the community center just outside Monument town limits had received nearly five times the number of ballots by midmorning Tuesday compared with all of Monday's count, site coordinator Jim Hackworth said this week.

Broerman's office waited to release results until after 8 p.m. Tuesday to allow voters who entered polling lines by 7 p.m. to submit their ballots, he said.

As of early Wednesday afternoon 291,339 El Paso County voters had returned ballots in Tuesday's election for a 62% voter turnout. Of those ballots, 20.2% were cast by Democrats, 38.4% by Republicans and the largest portion, 39.9%, were cast by unaffiliated voters, Broerman said.

Midterm elections in 2012, 2014 and 2018 saw voter turnout between 52% and 58%, he said.

"So it's high for a midterm election, but not as high as a presidential election," Broerman said.

The county saw record voter turnout in the 2020 general election, when 84.3% of active voters submitted ballots.

Broerman said he thinks El Paso County residents were mobilized to vote this year because of the slew of political races and the number of pertinent local issues to decide, such as the renewal of a regional 1-cent sales tax that funds multimodal transportation projects and the effort to legalize recreational marijuana in Colorado Springs, among others.

"I think the sentiment of the voters in the county is at play here," Broerman said.

The Teller County Clerk and Recorder's Office did not return The Gazette's request for information by time of press Wednesday.

Data from the Secretary of State's Office show that 12,653 Teller County voters had submitted ballots as of 11:59 p.m. Tuesday. Updated voter turnout numbers on the Secretary of State's Office website just after 3 p.m. Wednesday show 11,096 ballots have been officially counted in Teller County for a 58.7% voter turnout.