By Vince Phillips
In recent letters I examined signature verification, election judge training, societal shifts, and the dramatic reduction in overall safeguards. Officials often respond by pointing to what they call “layered security.”The Colorado County Clerks Association frequently cites some version of this statement:
“Layered Security – Ballot tracking, signature verification, and post-election audits that confirm accuracy.”
Let’s examine these layers:
Ballot Tracking (BallotTrax)
BallotTrax is useful visibility for those who choose to use it. In the 2022 general election, roughly half of vote-by-mail voters actually used the service. However, BallotTrax only tracks the envelope, not who actually signed and returned it. People who do not plan to vote, or who rarely check their status, are very unlikely to discover that someone else voted in their name. It provides the appearance of transparency and reassurance, but offers limited real protection against fraud.
Signature Verification
This is supposed to be the main gatekeeper. Yet, as covered in previous letters:
- The signature is provided without a witness.
- It is reviewed by minimally trained partisan election judges.
- When judges disagree, the ballot is counted anyway (“default to count”).
- Automated scanners can be adjusted to accept weaker matches.
The result is a single, relatively weak check replacing the multiple in-person safeguards of the past.
Post-Election Audits (Risk-Limiting Audits – RLA)
RLAs are presented as the ultimate backstop. In reality, especially for local races, they have virtually no utility:
- Only one race per county is selected for auditing — and that race is pre-chosen by the Secretary of State, not randomly selected by the county
- The selected race is almost always a county-wide office, leaving most city, school board, and ballot issues unexamined.
- With many different ballot styles (up to 28 in Chaffee County), the statistical sample for any single style is extremely small.
- The audit compares human interpretation of paper ballots to the machine’s original interpretation. While this catches some discrepancies, a limited number of errors does not trigger a full recount or deeper investigation.
This structure leaves local races and ballot measures, where margins are often small and stakes can be high, largely unexamined. This means localized problems or manipulation in smaller races can easily go undetected.
When Someone Shows Up to in-person Vote but you “Already Voted”
You are offered a provisional ballot and sign an affidavit stating you did not vote by mail. However, once the earlier mail ballot has been separated from its envelope and scanned into the system, it is extremely difficult to remove it from the final tally. The fraudulent ballot is likely to remain counted, while your new, provisional ballot may or may not be included after review.
The Bottom Line
Colorado has replaced multiple strong in-person safeguards with layers that emphasize convenience and visibility more than rigorous identity verification and error detection. When one layer depends on unwitnessed signatures and minimal training, another is mostly customer service used by only about half of voters (and almost never by non-voters), and the audit system is statistically weak and is only applied to a single hand-picked local race, the overall “layered security” is far less robust than officials claim.
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