By Vince Phillips
Colorado election officials frequently state:
This statement is carefully worded. It does not say “no discrepancies were ever found.” It does not say every ballot was counted correctly. It only says they did not find problems serious enough — in their judgment — to have changed an election outcome.This is a familiar rhetorical pattern. When officials want to expand access or relax verification rules, they declare “every vote must count.” Yet when specific problems surface, such as legitimate write-in votes that were never counted, the response quickly shifts to “it would not have changed the outcome.” The system appears designed more to control and limit investigation than to pursue the truth, and to pacify the public with vague, outcome-focused rationalizations.
Built-In Limitations That Prevent Deeper Scrutiny
- Only one race (usually a county-wide office) is typically the focus of the Risk-Limiting Audit.
- Most city council, school board, and ballot measure races go completely unexamined.
- With dozens or hundreds of ballot styles, the statistical sample for any single style is extremely thin.
- Discrepancies that fall below the statistical risk threshold are simply ignored and not explained or investigated further.
- Even if a county clerk discovers a problem, Secretary of State rules and procedures make broad, independent investigation difficult.
In short, the process is structured so that small or localized errors, the very kind most likely to result from programming choices or insider manipulation, can easily be dismissed as statistically insignificant. A true gold standard would aggressively investigate every anomalous result and openly acknowledge that the vast majority of races on the ballot receive little or no meaningful audited review. Instead, we get carefully qualified reassurances that protect the narrative more than they protect the integrity of every vote.
With up to 28 different ballot styles in Chaffee County, and hundreds in larger counties, the Risk-Limiting Audit provides very limited statistical confidence for most local races. Only one (or very few) contests chosen by the Secretary of State receive the full power of the audit. Most city council, school board, special district, and ballot issue races are not targeted. Because the sample is spread so thinly across many ballot styles, it is entirely possible for all votes in one particular style to be incorrectly interpreted or flipped, enough to change the outcome of a close local race, while the RLA still concludes with “no discrepancies found.”
Even when discrepancies are discovered, there is no requirement to collate or analyze them by ballot style to look for patterns or systemic issues or errors. For the average local contest decided by margins of 7 points or less, the audit simply does not deliver the high-confidence protection officials claim when they call it the “gold standard.”
I continue to invite the Secretary of State’s office and county clerks to address these realities directly:
- Why does the official claim focus only on outcome-changing discrepancies rather than all discrepancies?
- If small errors are found below the threshold, why is there no requirement for broader investigation to check for systemic problems?
- Are county clerks permitted to conduct independent investigations beyond the narrow RLA framework, or do state rules effectively discourage it?
- Why is meaningful independent citizen access to paper ballots so consistently difficult to obtain?
Sunlight remains the best disinfectant. Until Colorado election officials are willing to move beyond carefully worded statements and provide genuine transparency, skepticism about the true strength of our “gold standard” is not only reasonable, it is the responsible position. As always, I welcome detailed data and clarification from officials. We need stronger election procedures, not excuses.
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