As this year’s primary election gets underway, close to 380 election judges and 16 full-time staff members will be keeping a close eye on incoming ballots in Jefferson County.
And helping them along the way is a $1 million vote-sorting machine, fondly known among the basement dwellers of the county’s Laramie Building as HAL.
Acquired by the county in 2021, and named after the fictional artificial intelligence character in Arthur C. Clarke’s “Space Odyssey” series, JeffCO’s electronic helper has been doing a lot of the heavy lifting as ballots start to arrive.
‘“It’s very fast and is very high-tech," Jefferson County Chief Communications Officer Sarah McAfee said. “This sorting machine can process 50,000 ballots an hour, and every ballot envelope is going to go through twice.”
It’s important to know that HAL doesn’t count votes — HAL only sorts them.
“So, on the first pass, it's going to take a picture of the signature that is on that envelope and then scan the barcode, which is attached to your voter ID, and it's going to attempt to make a match,” McAfee said.
HAL uses software that’s very similar to what many banks use for signature matching on checks.
And if HAL finds a match, it will accept that ballot.
Voters who have signed up for BallotTrax will then receive an email indicating the ballot has been accepted.
About 70% of the ballots scammed by HAL are able to be matched with a signature and accepted. The remaining 30% are then forwarded for manual signature verification.
While Jefferson County has close to 435,000 registered voters, only 415,000 ballots were mailed because members of minor political parties are not eligible to vote in the Republican or Democrat primary. Unaffiliated voters can cast a ballot in either primary.
For most voters in Jefferson County, McAfee said most ballots will begin their journey through the system at any one of the 37 drop-off boxes.
McAfee estimates, that for this election, approximately 99% of all votes cast in the county will be via a drop-box
Drop-off boxes are secure, poured into concrete and all are under video surveillance as required by law.
“A fundamental part of our process is that we do everything in bipartisan teams,” McAfee said. "So, we will have a team of transport judges show up to collect the ballots.”
Transport teams roll up, collect the ballots, and secure them in a sealed collection bag. They are then taken back to the county building for sorting and validation.
Ballots are not opened until they are accepted.
For those ballots that are not accepted, bipartisan teams work to remedy any anomalies or questions regarding signatures.
And they make the final call, McAfee said.
“They're going to have access to that voter's entire signature history, all of their signatures on file, and they're going to compare the signature on the envelope to the signatures in those files,” she said. “And if there's a match, they will accept it will go back to the sorter, so it can be opened.”
If not, there is an opportunity to "cure" the ballot, which happens in cases where, for example, there are questions about a voter’s eligibility or signature.
Eligible and accepted ballots are then removed from their envelopes and prepared for the tabulation machines.
A clean ballot, with no anomalies, will spend about 3.5 hours, from start to finish, moving through the county election system, according to Geneice Murphy, Jefferson County elections director.
Jefferson County Clerk and Recorder Amanda Gonzales is disappointed in the low turnout, so far, for this year’s county primary.
“I think the last numbers I saw have us hovering somewhere around 18%,” she said. “Hopefully, we’ll see a significant bump.”
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