Week 32: Election Integrity Is Election Security AND So Much More

Dear Colorado Voter,

Election integrity – one of my priority issues – may seem synonymous with election security. Yet, election integrity is so much more.

The goal of election integrity is free and fair elections with trusted results. The entire electoral process – from ballot access (how candidates get on the ballot) to voter registration to campaign finance to media access to ballot delivery to the voting method (choose-one, ranking, rating) to our semi-open primaries – affects the integrity of elections.

Election security is just one part of election integrity. A secure election provides chain of custody, pre-election equipment testing, post-election tabulation audits, and other safeguards that protect ballots from being altered and ensure every valid vote is counted. County clerks and I have discussed closing two security loopholes: one that currently affects a small number of mail ballots and another with risk-limiting audits (RLAs). In July in Weld County, I participated in a pilot program that independently verified RLA results. Let’s expand from a pilot to a standard procedure.

Competitive elections are an important part of free and fair elections, but when a competitive single-winner contest has 3 or more candidates, and voters are limited to choosing one candidate, there is no guarantee that the electorate’s preferred choice wins. In the primary, we had 3 gubernatorial candidates on the Republican side and 4 attorney general candidates on the Democratic side. Since neither winner got a majority of the vote, we are left wondering if a more expressive ranking or rating voting method would have resulted in different winners.

Because the vote on a ranked ballot isn’t necessarily stable – during tabulation a vote may transfer from a first choice to a second choice – ranked voting methods are harder to audit than our traditional plurality voting. Two voting methods that are easy to audit are Approval Voting (which Littleton has inquired about) for a single-winner contest and a Party List system for a multi-winner contest. Party List systems elect the top vote-getters from each party in proportion to the electorate’s party preferences AND solve our gerrymandering wars! Nonpartisan municipal elections can’t use Party Lists; after the SoS writes the long-delayed rules called for in 1-7-1004 C.R.S., municipalities can use a proportional ranked voting method (which Longmont voters will see on their November ballot). With Election Day only 42 days away, we would love to see Celeste for SOS yard signs in every county. Contact us! We deliver!

With enthusiasm and purpose,

Celeste