Hand Count Arapahoe
The Problem
Our current system of elections is insecure because it is not transparent. The three biggest problems are:
- Voter registration system which fails to flag problems such as voters voting before they are registered
- Mail-in ballots which are more vulnerable than cash sent through the mail
- Election machines which require voters to trust the honesty of an anonymous programmer somewhere.
Voter Registration
Our voter rolls are well-known to be filthy; Judicial Watch sued Colorado to clean them, but the Secretary of State ignored the order. But the voter registration system itself needs overhaul; a citizen audit of state voter data found far more than the number of errors needed to invalidate an election using that data.
Voter list maintenance has been centralized to a level where it is not possible to know the details of a neighborhood, and the systems that were supposed to automatically clean the voter rolls have failed. Voter roll maintenance needs to be returned to the most local levels.
Mail-In Ballots
Mail-in ballots are wide-open for fraud. The post office does not operate with the same level of chain of custody required for secure elections. In most elections, half the ballots are never used, after being mailed out at an estimated cost of $10 per ballot to people who never intended to vote.
We don't know who filled out a mail-in ballot; at best we only know who signed it. We don't know if the ballot was filled out in secrecy or at gunpoint - we have no ability to guarantee that voter had privacy. In fact, we have no ability to guarantee that ballot ever went to the voter - mail gets stolen all the time.
Election Machines
You don't have to know about the Internet connectivity, the foreign-made software, the frequent malfunctions, the changed results, or the myriad of other problems with election machines.
All you have to do is question why anyone would ever ask you to trust them with counting your ballot in a machine you can't see inside, which you would need to be a software engineer to understand, when there are simple, cheap, transparent systems that let you personally watch your ballot get counted.
The Problem with Centralizing
"Because vote centers must manage huge volumes of voters using county‑wide electronic pollbooks, they depend on complex networks and real‑time data synchronization across multiple sites, so a single software error or communication failure can ripple across every location. At the same time, large‑scale operations erode the human‑scale protection of local familiarity that smaller precincts once provided; poll workers rarely recognize voters personally, making it harder to catch duplicate registrations, address mismatches, or unusual patterns in real time."
"Vote centers also require co‑mingling of ballots from across an entire county. This further complicates any serious effort to audit or reconstruct what happened in a given election. When ballots are issued and cast in locations that serve all precincts, and then are stored and processed without preserving clear precinct‑level separation, it becomes difficult or impossible to trace results back to specific neighborhoods and precincts. This loss of delineation undermines one of the most powerful checks in a precinct‑based system: the ability to compare reported results with expected patterns and turnout in each precinct, and to “reverse engineer” an election by re‑examining ballots and records within well‑defined geographic and administrative boundaries."
Current Elections vs. the Law
UNDER CONSTRUCTION - CHECK BACK AS RESEARCH GETS FINISHED
Legal problems with our current system of elections include:
- United States Constitution Article IV, Section 4 guarantees every state a republican (representative democracy) form of government. In order to self-govern by choosing these representatives we have to know the election was valid; that all legal votes, and only legal votes, were properly counted. In the current complex system, where few citizens are allowed near the counting process, it is not possible for the average voter to know this, and arguably not possible for officials to prove it.
- HAVA (federal law: Help America Vote Act) - September 9, 2024 lawsuit against Colorado was based on HAVA violations. "According to the Plaintiffs, Respondent election officials failed to meet those minimum standards in Colorado's 2022 federal general election rendering the certified election results in that year unreliable. ... Plaintiffs revealed 1,431,998 facially ineligible or uncertain registrations resulting in 100,693 improperly counted votes and 34,912 more votes counted than votes reported."
- Colorado law Mail-in ballots prevent us from identifying voters, so we can't legally certify any elections under Colorado Revised Statute.
- C.R.S. 1-10-101.5(1)(a) says the canvass board shall "Reconcile the ballots cast in an election to confirm that the number of ballots counted in that election does not exceed the number of ballots cast in that election"
- But this is not possible, because the definition of ballot in C.R.S. 1-1-104(1.7) says "'Ballot' means the list of all candidates, ballot issues, and ballot questions upon which an eligible elector is entitled to vote at an election."
- But 1-1-104(16) says "'Eligible elector' means a person who meets the specific requirements for voting at a specific election or for a specific candidate, ballot question, or ballot issue."
- It is not possible to know whether the person who filled out a mail-in ballot was the eligible elector. If it wasn't filled out by an eligible elector, then it is not legally a ballot. So it is not possible for election officials, or the canvass board, to know how many apparent ballots were legal ballots, so any confirmation they make of the number ballots counted in the election is false.
- And C.R.S. 1-13-107 says "Any public officer, election official, or other person upon whom any duty is imposed by this code who violates, neglects, or fails to perform such duty or ... who knowingly makes a false certificate in regard to a matter connected with any election provided by law upon conviction shall be punished [as a class 2 misdemeanor]."
- Secretary of State (SOS) rules vs Colorado law
- In Election Rule 10.3.3(b), the SOS prohibits the canvass board from evaluating voter eligibility. Therefore, the canvass board can't know whether a ballot is actually a ballot, since a ballot, by definition, must be cast by an eligible elector. As pointed out above, that means a class 2 misdemeanor for each member of the canvass board who certifies the election. The only legal choice a canvass board has, is not to certify, because the SOS has prevented them from knowing whether ballots are ballots.
Cases and legal evidence brought against Colorado and Arapahoe County elections:
