GOLDEN, Colo. — George Stern has given a lot of tours of his office this year.
The Jefferson County clerk, a Democrat, said his office has received more questions about election integrity than it normally would during an odd year election. He’s offered anyone who has a question a tour to see the process for themselves.
“It’s easy to have ideas of what this process looks like when you read about it on the internet or you hear national conspiracy theories about it,” Stern said. “We want to bring people in in person to show it to them.”
“When people see it with their own eyes, they say alright I feel better about the Colorado system.”
Stern said he and his colleagues on both sides of the political spectrum have been working hard to battle misinformation.
“This has been a tough year,” he said. “We’ve been doing the same good work for a long time and only in the last year has that work been questioned on factual inaccuracies, on complete misinformation used to question our elections.”
Stern said his office has always gotten questions from the public about elections, but this year the questions changed.
“It used to be how do you ensure that someone doesn’t vote twice,” he recalled. “How do you ensure that a college student who’s moved off to college is no longer in the home but their ballot’s still showing up.”
“The questions now are more about the machines. They’re about how do you ensure that the machine is not changing votes.”
Matt Crane, the former Republican clerk from Arapahoe County who now is the executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, said bad actors who spread misinformation after the 2020 election have cast far more doubt in voters.
“It seems like there’s a new rumor or conspiracy theory popping up every day,” Crane said. “So, what we do is we try to keep track of it and we work to get the truth out to the public square as fast as we can.”
He said most clerks around the state have been holding town halls to answer voters’ questions and giving tours to show people the process.
“Right now you have some people coming so determined to see a ghost, so if they see a cable connected to something they’re like oh you’re connected to the internet when they’re not connected to the internet.”
Stern and Crane agree, showing people the process has removed much doubt. But there is still a lot of work to be done.
“My greatest fear is that people are going to think that they’ve got so many questions about election integrity that they throw up their hands and say why bother participating,” Stern said.
“When people see it with their own eyes, they say alright I feel better about the Colorado system.”
SUGGESTED VIDEOS: Full Episodes of Next with Kyle Clark