'Ultimately a small mistake': What to know about the hole in Pueblo ballot envelopes

With Election Day less than a week away, nearly 15,000 Pueblo voters have already turned in their ballots.

Several candidates for Pueblo mayor have been raising awareness about an issue they think could compromise voter anonymity.

Questions remain about the holes in ballot return envelopes that can reveal voters’ choices.

The Chieftain made multiple requests for comment and sent a detailed list of questions to Pueblo County Clerk Candace Rivera, who declined to be interviewed but sent a brief statement through a county spokesperson.

“Colorado and Pueblo County elections are safe and secure," Rivera wrote. "Every vote will be counted. I am committed to running integral elections and I do not have the time to discuss this at this time. I am happy to speak with you further in December when this election is closed."

Rivera was first elected to the position in November 2022 after unseating longtime incumbent Gilbert “Bo” Ortiz in the Democratic primary. She campaigned on improving transparency, boosting workplace morale and optimizing the department.

Why there's holes in the ballot return envelopes

Several other counties in Colorado have a hole in their ballot envelopes — it’s to help election staff make sure that they remove all of the ballots from envelopes as a “quality control measure.”

That’s according to Matt Crane, the executive director of the Colorado County Clerk’s Association, a statewide organization for the clerk and recorders in the state’s 64 counties. He previously served as the clerk and recorder in Arapahoe County.

Crane told the Chieftain that more counties have also been using them in tandem with colored ballots during primary elections to help sort how unaffiliated voters cast ballots.

Crane said that in his experience, it's rare to see a ballot hole envelope: it's come up "maybe once or twice before" in the past 15 years.

Rivera, county officials continue to say hole is fine

Rivera and Pueblo County officials have continued to assert that voters’ choices are not visible through the ballot hole.

“People might be a little concerned and say, ‘Well, they might be able to see the results or how I'm voting,’ but that's not really the case, right?” county spokesperson Adam Uhernik asked Rivera in a video posted to the Pueblo County Facebook page on Oct. 23.

“You cannot see personal information through that hole that has been approved in our election plan with the Secretary of State's office … You cannot see private information in that hole,” Rivera said.

However, the Chieftain reviewed multiple ballots sent to Pueblo County voters. If voters fold their ballots in the same way that they came, there is a possibility some voters’ selections for the mayoral candidates is visible.

The ballot return envelopes include identifying information such as voters’ names, addresses and a line for the required signature.

Placement of ballot hole should be 'standard part' of quality control

In the county's video, Rivera emphasized that the ballot design had been approved by the Colorado Secretary of State’s office. Jack Todd, a spokesperson with the Secretary of State, confirmed with the Chieftain last week that Pueblo's election plan had been approved.

Crane said that double-checking the positioning of the ballot hole is the responsibility of the county — not the secretary of state or the printing vendor.

Todd confirmed that the Secretary of State's office reviews an electronic file of the election plans for Colorado's counties, but the approval process does not include checking for the placement of holes in ballot return envelopes.

A sample ballot should have been folded in all possible configurations to figure out if there were any issues with disclosing voters’ choices in the return envelope, Crane said.

The content of the ballot is certified about 60 days before an election, then ballots are configured. Crane said that checking to make sure ovals corresponding to voters’ choices don’t line up with any holes in the return envelope “should just be a standard part of the quality control process when you’re designing your ballot.”

“It sounds like they did some (quality control), but maybe not enough — but I have every confidence that they will not have this happen again,” Crane said.

Using ballot instruction page should be adequate to protect identities

Secrecy sleeves are not required under Colorado law — Crane said that the “vast majority” of counties do not use them.

Crane said that using the ballot instruction page, which Rivera has advised voters include for “extra” security, is adequate to protect voters’ identities.

The county’s advice about how to mitigate voters’ concerns about the ballot sleeve has been posted in a video to the Pueblo County Facebook page and shared in a press release with some local media outlets but is not posted in writing on the county’s election page.

Crane said that it would be a good idea to keep an eye on the amount of overvotes — when voters select more than one bubble — to gauge if anything “nefarious” happened, and compare that to previous years as well as other contests on the ballots. After ballots are removed from envelopes, it’s not possible to link that back to the voter.

In the 2018 mayoral contest, there were 35 overvotes recorded on the 41,227 total ballots returned.

Still, Crane said that it’s unlikely that anything will change the outcome of the election.

What mayoral candidates have said about the issue

Several mayoral candidates, including Chris Nicoll, Heather Graham and Randy Thurston have been expressed concern about the ballot hole over the past week and a half.

Nicoll held a press conference in front of the city clerk’s office last Monday. He said he worries that the open hole could lead to bad actors affecting the outcome of the election and called on the clerk’s office to be more transparent with communicating to voters.

“(County officials) won't address the issue that the bubbles are visible: they won't get into any of the details or the core problems. They're just keep repeating the same thing over and over again, hoping it goes away basically,” Nicoll recently told the Chieftain.

The incumbent, Mayor Nick Gradisar, told the Chieftain that he is not worried about the hole in the ballot return envelope. He said that people are concerned about the security of the election are linking it to other rhetoric and that’s not a good idea.

“The people who designed that ballot had no ulterior motives, no hidden agendas,” Gradisar said.

Crane said that the issue with the ballot hole is a minor issue that should be addressed in future elections — but that the security of the current election is still intact.

“In the grand scheme of things, this is ultimately a small mistake that is easily correctable, and I think that people should still trust the integrity of the election overall — people's access isn't being hindered by this,” Crane said.

Elections are run by people who can sometimes make mistakes, Crane said. But intensifying discourse questioning election security and the validity of elections — promulgated by former President Donald Trump during and after his unsuccessful re-election bid — has put even more pressure on election workers to be perfect.

“We try to build as many redundancies and guardrails into that process as possible to mitigate those mistakes and to make it easy to identify and correct, but it's a challenge to be perfect in an environment where we know that people will lie about anything if they think they can gain, politically or financially,” Crane said.

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: Hole in Pueblo ballot envelopes should've been caught, expert says