DOUGLAS COUNTY, Colo. — For years, cameras have kept a constant eye on Colorado's ballot drop boxes, it's the law.
Now, Douglas County is going a step further by adding more video surveillance. The county clerk and recorder hope this will help voters feel more confident in the voting process.
Few experiences are as American as casting your ballot. With Election Day fast approaching, Douglas County Clerk and Recorder Sheri Davis and her team are already busy with mail-in ballots pouring in.
"We absolutely are. We received over 3,000 on the first day, so they are coming in fast and furious," said Davis.
People in Douglas County take their vote seriously. Davis said nearly everyone in the county drops their ballot by box.
"They absolutely do. We have about 3% of our voters who take advantage of walk-in voting, in-person voting," Davis said.
So this election, the county is stepping up its surveillance of ballot boxes and adding its own 24/7 video monitoring beyond the state-required cameras.
“Historically, we have been leveraging other peoples’ video surveillance. For example, the Town of Parker - we leverage their video surveillance cameras on their box," Davis said. "Well, we found that if we needed to see something right away in real-time, we really needed to have camera surveillance that we could access right away."
The cameras help the county keep an eye on the ballot boxes. But the public can, too. The video feed is up 24/7 online now through Election Day.
The clerk's office decided to offer the real-time video to the public.
"We have a number of citizens who are very concerned about the fact that these boxes are not watched by humans," said Davis. "Well now, anybody can watch them from the comfort of their home or wherever they're at. And they can observe what's happening at the ballot drop boxes."
Added transparency, Davis hopes, will help people feel more comfortable trusting the process.
"That's exactly right. We want to be as transparent on every piece of the process as we can," Davis said. "There are urban legends, right? And so we want to squash those fears and we want our citizens to feel confident that we are running secure elections and that they can rely on that."