Some Pueblo voters received duplicate runoff ballots. City, county disagree on what's to blame

A small group of voters in the city-run mayoral runoff election are receiving duplicate ballots in the mail, but officials from the city of Pueblo and Pueblo County have contrasting explanations about why the error happened.

City Clerk Marisa Stoller told the Chieftain that approximately 500 voters of the 68,000 who live within city limits are receiving two ballots. Stoller said that the duplicate ballots happened because of how the city receives voter information from Pueblo County.

This is easily rectifiable, Stoller said, and there are multiple checks in place to ensure that nobody can vote twice in the election.

However, Pueblo County released a statement Tuesday afternoon putting the blame on Stoller, the designated election official for the runoff.

Here’s what we know about why some voters are getting two ballots for the mayoral runoff contest between Heather Graham and incumbent Nick Gradisar — and what to do if you get one.

Why some voters are getting duplicate ballots, according to the city

Counties in Colorado are required by law to run some elections, but local political entities such as cities and special districts sometimes run their own.

However, state law requires that counties always share certified lists of eligible voters with local governments because cities don’t have direct access to some state databases.

The city received an initial list from the county on Dec. 11, 2023, and a supplemental list on Dec. 20, city spokesperson Haley Sue Robinson told the Chieftain in a text message.

Supplemental lists should include “a list of eligible electors who became eligible since the earlier list was certified,” Colorado law states.

Stoller told the Chieftain in a phone interview Tuesday, before the county released its statement, that the supplemental list from the county also included voters who had updated their registration information — such as their party affiliation — or received new drivers licenses.

She said that the city doesn’t have access to the county’s databases and that “we don’t know what’s changed.”

“We don't have all the voting software and everything else that (the county does) that gives them all the qualified information. They're just giving us spreadsheets, so we have the spreadsheets but we don't have the same ability to compare them and do things that the county can do,” Stoller said.

She added that the city cannot check for duplicates between the two spreadsheets and said the county does not have the capacity to do so as it's preparing for the presidential primary in March.

Robinson said Stoller and the city’s experienced election consultant, Karen Goldman, were unavailable Wednesday to answer questions, but shared a statement from Stoller Wednesday morning.

“I have spoken with other clerks who hold large elections and send out thousands of ballots, including other county clerks, who did tell me that duplicate ballots are a common printing error and are the easiest to fix from a voter standpoint,” Stoller said in the statement.

Why the county says the city is to blame

Pueblo County Public Information Officer Adam Uhernik sent a statement to local media outlets Tuesday afternoon that deflects county responsibility for the duplicate ballots.

“While it is the responsibility of Pueblo County to maintain voter registration when an entity runs an election, it is the responsibility of the designated election official running a given election to ensure duplicate ballots and the quality control of information is handled in accordance with state and municipal law,” according to the statement.

Pueblo County Clerk and Recorder Candace Rivera did not respond to multiple detailed requests for comment, including whether the county had sent any duplicate ballots in the November 2023 election.

Uhernik declined to respond to detailed questions in an email to the Chieftain and referred all questions to the city clerk’s office.

Rivera’s office previously sent an inaccurate list of eligible voters for various special district elections in Pueblo County held in May 2023, so 16- and 17-year-olds who were preregistered to vote when they got their drivers licenses were mailed ballots. However, election security measures prevented any underage residents from voting in the election.

Pueblo County also deflected responsibility to the designated election official for ensuring accuracy of the voter lists last spring, saying that the county’s obligation was just to send over a list of eligible voters.

In Tuesday's statement, the county said that upon sharing a voter list with the city clerk, the elections department “discussed concerns involving duplicate ballots and explained how to ensure duplicate ballots would not go out to voters participating in the election." The statement did not specify whether the referenced voter list was the initial list sent on Dec. 11 or the supplemental list sent on Dec. 20.

The city thanked Rivera and her staff "for the help and expertise offered throughout the election process" in a statement Robinson shared with the Chieftain Wednesday.

The role of the printer

Robinson confirmed that Stoller had a conversation with Pueblo County about potential duplicate ballots from the supplemental list and passed that along to the printer, “who checked the list and stated that they did not find any duplicate information.”

Frederic Printing, based in Aurora, was selected as the vendor to print and mail ballots for the runoff election. It was the only company in Colorado to submit a bid, according to the city’s bid database.

Frank Kaplan has been the point person at Frederic for printing ballots for Pueblo’s runoff election. Kaplan told the Chieftain Wednesday afternoon that the company has worked on hundreds of elections in Colorado and that duplicate ballots are not "unusual" but are still relatively rare.

Kaplan emphasized that voting systems are secure and that any duplicate ballots returned to local governments are “always 100% caught at the other end.”

Frederic Printing also received two transmissions of voter information from the city, Kaplan said, but the company’s role is to print and mail out the ballots.

“We receive the list and that's what we print,” Kaplan said.

Kaplan told the Chieftain he did not recall having a conversation with Stoller about potential duplicates but said they had also received a “void list” from the city with approximately 100-200 ballots that needed to be pulled before everything was put in the mail.

“The ballot packet has already been put together and everything’s ready for the post office — then a team goes through and literally pulls the ballots that are on that void list,” Kaplan explained.

Stoller also told the Chieftain on Tuesday that it is not the printer’s obligation to provide quality control for duplicate ballots.

What to do if you get a duplicate ballot

There are multiple election security stopgaps in place to ensure that each person only gets to vote once in the election.

The city advised in a Monday news release that the voters who receive a duplicate ballot should just vote using one of the ballots and destroy the second.

Stoller said that if the city receives two ballots from any one voter, they will refer the second ballot to the district attorney’s office for potential voter fraud prosecution.

Anna Lynn Winfrey covers politics for the Pueblo Chieftain. She can be reached at awinfrey@gannett.com. Please support local news at subscribe.chieftain.com.

This article originally appeared on The Pueblo Chieftain: Pueblo County blames city clerk for duplicate runoff ballots