Dear Editor,
Who is tampering with our ballot boxes?
On July 5, 2022, I filed an open records request for the ballot box logs from the June 2022 primary election. You can view the logs here: https://tinyurl.com/33r3ehb9
Ballot box logs document the chain of custody of the ballot boxes. Each box is sealed with a numbered seal. According to the Secretary of State’s (SoS) election rule 20.5.1, two witnesses must be present each time a ballot box is opened to ensure the integrity of the ballots. The logs record the signatures of the witnesses and the corresponding seal numbers.
While reviewing the logs from the June 2022 primary, I found four instances where only one person was present when a ballot box was opened. This is a breach of the SoS rules. In one case, County Clerk Lori Mitchell was the only signatory.
In another instance, a receiving judge refused to sign the log because the ballot box was marked as “open,” indicating a broken seal. This prompted questions about ballot tampering. When a ballot box seal is broken, the Clerk is required to investigate, document the findings, and report to the SoS. To find out if this happened, I filed an election complaint with the SoS in July 2022.
In July 2023, a year after I filed the ballot box election complaint, I founded HICCUP, a non-profit to promote election integrity. When I contacted the Chaffee County Democratic Party for support, then-Chairman Jerry Mallet was skeptical of the need for election oversight. However, he checked with the SoS’s office and found that my complaint had been received but never addressed. He testified about the SoS’s inaction at the August 15, 2023, Salida City Council meeting: https://tinyurl.com/2zyfmmmd
During that meeting, Mallet confounded the ballot box chain of custody complaint with a separate open records request for ballot images. The Clerk initially asked for thousands of dollars for the ballot images, but promised to release them for free. However, the ballot images have never been released, and my ballot box complaint remains unaddressed by the SoS.
As a nation, we value our laws, but selective enforcement undermines this principle. According to Colorado law, County Clerks must follow the election rules set by the SoS. What happens when these rules aren’t enforced or are applied inconsistently? Can we still call ourselves a nation of laws?
Jerry Raski
Salida, CO
Editor’s note, we will be addressing complaints against the Chaffee Country Clerk and other public servants as we receive them.
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