JEFFERSON COUNTY, Colo. — Before a ballot envelope is opened by the county election office, the signature on the ballot envelope must be verified.
In Mesa County, an investigation is underway after at least 12 ballots were returned with bad signatures before the voter even received that ballot at their home.
Three of those ballot envelopes were reviewed by election judges overseeing signature verification and approved to be removed from the ballot and counted.
Signature verification compares the signature on the ballot to signatures the county has on file for that particular voter.
In Jefferson County, as of Oct. 24, more than 106,000 ballot envelopes have gone through the computerized sorter. That machine snaps an image of the signature on the ballot envelope and determines if there is a match to the signature on the voter’s file or if it needs human eyes to review.
"The outside of your ballot envelope is what has your signature, and we never open an envelope until we have verified that the signature belongs to the person whose name is on the envelope,” Democratic Jefferson County Clerk Amanda Gonzalez said.
Of the 106,000 ballots through the sorter, 58,000 signatures were automatically verified.
"It verifies 11 different points on your signature to see if it has a match."
That is 55% of all ballots.
The other 48,000 needed to be reviewed by two election judges. Those election judges are of opposing political parties, or at least one is unaffiliated.
“That image is going to go to our teams of election judges that are going to review your signature as well as the signatures that we have on file for you,”
“We give you a test of 100 signatures before you're even able to go to the training,” Gonzalez said. “People who have a knack for verification then are trained, and they become our signature verification election judges.”
Of the 48,000 ballot envelopes that needed to be reviewed by election judges, 42,000 were verified, leaving 6,200 more to be reviewed by another set of election judges.
That set of election judges have access to even more signatures from that voter from previous elections, the DMV and other county agencies that may have had a document you previously signed.
"If you're somebody that's been voting in Colorado for a long time, we might actually have dozens,” Gonzalez said.
In Jefferson County, only 521 ballot envelopes, less than one-half of one percent turned in so far, still do not have signatures verified or need to be “cured” – or fixed – for another reason, like a first-time voter not providing a copy of their ID.
The clerk’s office reaches out to those voters, and if they do not respond, those unopened ballot envelopes get sent to the district attorney to see if there was a crime committed.
"We don't ever open the envelope at all, and we do not count the ballot unless we can verify that that signature is a match,” Gonzalez said.