By Vince Phillips
In Colorado Elections #1, I presented clear photographic evidence from the 2022 general election in Chaffee County: Dominion Voting scanners produced official ballot images in which the blank ovals next to candidates’ names had been removed. The original paper ballots showed clean, unmarked ovals. The scanner-generated images had removed them.
This is not a trivial visual issue. Under Colorado law, voter intent is officially determined from the ballot image, not directly from the physical paper ballot. The machine’s interpretation of that altered image becomes the official record of the vote.
This raises fundamental questions that Chaffee County election officials have never fully answered:
- What is the full extent of the programmer’s or election official’s power to alter or suppress elements of the official ballot image?
- Are there any practical limits on what can be changed?
- Who approves these settings, and why are they not transparently documented for public review?
Using Dominion’s Election Event Designer software, county officials define every ballot style, up to 28 different styles in Chaffee County and hundreds in larger counties, defined by the many overlapping jurisdictions a voter resides in. Election Officials control how each ballot type is laid out, how the scanner interprets voter marks, and how the final ballot image is processed and saved. They decide both what the machine looks for when calling a vote and how the permanent official record of that vote will appear.
The Risk-Limiting Audit Is Not a Reliable Safeguard
Colorado’s Risk-Limiting Audit (RLA) is heavily promoted as the ultimate safeguard that makes full paper ballot audits unnecessary. In practice, it has numerous critical limitations, especially for local elections:
- Only one race per county is typically audited, and that race is pre-selected by the Secretary of State.
- The selected race is almost always a county-wide office, leaving most city, school board, and ballot issue contests unexamined.
- With dozens or hundreds of different ballot styles, the statistical sample for any single style is extremely thin.
- Auditors compare their manual interpretation of paper ballots to the Cast Vote Record (CVR) produced by the very same system being audited.
- Even when discrepancies are found, a limited number of errors does not automatically trigger a minoe investigation, much less a full hand count.
Philip Stark, the architect of Risk-Limiting Audits, has stated clearly that “ideally, every contest in every election should undergo a risk-limiting audit.” His statistical models were designed for broad application across multiple, or even all, races on the ballot. Colorado’s scaled-down version, which typically audits only a handful of races statewide and just one per county, falls well short of that standard. Yet officials continue to quote Stark’s assurances while operating a significantly diluted version of his original design.
In my own experience, When I formally requested the ability to review the actual paper ballots from the 2022 election to better understand why over 100 write in ballots for Chaffee County Clerk went uncounted, Chaffee County election officials refused to provide access or a meaningful response.
This is the very definition of lack of transparency. When the official visual record of a citizen’s vote can be altered, whether by design or error, and citizens are denied the opportunity to examine the original paper ballots, public confidence in the process is not justified.
I continue to invite Chaffee County election officials to explain, on the record:
- What is the full extent of the power to manipulate or alter ballot images away from the original paper ballot?
- What limits, if any, exist on these capabilities?
- Why were the blank ovals removed from the official ballot images in 2022?
- Why was a legitimate request to review the original paper ballots denied?
Until we receive clear, transparent answers, the repeated claim that Colorado operates the “gold standard” of elections remains more marketing slogan than proven reality.
Support Independent Local Journalism — High Country Advocate was created as a real alternative to regional media that too often silences dissenting voices while taking sides in the political struggle. Producing in-depth, unflinching reporting like this series and others is expensive: servers, editing, research time, and legal review all add up quickly. If these articles have informed you or given you new perspective, please consider supporting HCA with a paid subscription — every subscriber helps keep this reporting strong and independent.
