She’s Got Mail continued from page 13 town. I decided that I loved Denver, and I applied for a job as an operational coordina- tor at the Denver Elections Commission, as it was called then. In the interview, the guy who would eventually be my boss — I was 24, had my master’s and had held various director-level jobs — said, “Aren’t you a little young to be applying for this job?” That kind of told me a lot about the cul- ture of the commission. I was wondering, am I going to be the youngest person they have? I think it was my fi rst day on the job when he said, “Why aren’t you married yet? Don’t you want to have kids?” The fi rst year was tough for me. I felt like an outsider. I didn’t feel that I had anyone in the offi ce that I could talk to who had similar views and values to mine. So I kind of didn’t fi t in with the norm, if you will, in the offi ce back then. But there were a few folks who cared about putting the voters fi rst and doing whatever we could to serve voters effectively, and those of us that cared about that ultimately moved up in the organization and were part of the change. In 2006, Denver had a terrible election, with a technology failure at the vote centers. The part of the offi ce that I was responsible for at that time were mail ballots and military and overseas voters, and that largely went the way that it should have, while voters who went to vote centers had to wait in fi ve- or six-hour lines because of poor technology planning. At that time, I was a staffer in an environment where I couldn’t make any of the decisions, but I saw what bad looks like. A lot of people were probably disenfranchised. I kept a journal that I wrote during that pro- cess. I took notes and journaled, “Well, if it was me, I would do this....” It became kind of a playbook for the rest of my life. Stephanie O’Malley came in as clerk, and she met with those of us who were still there and not let go after the debacle. When she met with me, she said, “I know you’re considering maybe going to the state, but I really want you to be part of the change here. What do you think of that?” And I said, “I would love to do that. I would love to be part of the change, and I have a whole book of ideas.” What were the main concepts that you brought to the table? The most successful companies 14 in the world put their customers fi rst — they try to be responsive and thoughtful and create great user environments. I think it should be the same with the voting process, but that hasn’t always been the approach. As we reorganized the offi ce, Stephanie appointed me to be a manager, then deputy direc- tor. The new director and myself and Clerk O’Malley literally trans- formed the organization. What guided everything we did is the idea that elections should have a set of values that matter equally. The acronym I use for that is FASTER, and it stands for fair, accessible, secure, transparent, equitable and reliable. All of those values matter equally in the voting process. What we often see is — and we’re seeing this now — we see legislators only talk about security, or only talk about accessibility. But all those values matter equally: fairness, accessibility, security, transparency, equity and reliability. We have to balance those objectives when we’re creating policies, and also when we’re trying to create a process that voters can be proud of, that they can be excited about — and in my mind, that does not involve waiting in a fi ve-hour line. We have to meet people where they are in their lives. This is their right to vote, and it should not be diffi cult. It should not be laced with barriers that prevent anyone, regardless of affi liation, from participating. I believe strongly that our country was founded on that philosophy. And to get there, we have to center the process around the voter. You put in place a system that allows for an enormous amount of transparency. Can you explain the origin of the Ballot TRACE system? In 2008, when I was deputy director, we had the highest turnout we had ever seen. We had to staff about a sixty-person phone bank to handle calls about the election. The majority of calls were either “I missed the voter registra- tion deadline, how do I register?” or “Where’s my polling place?” And then the second or third top call every time was “Where’s my bal- lot?” “Did you mail it?” “Did you get it back?” We didn’t have a system for the agents to look up where a ballot was, so we looked at that: Okay, is there a technological solution to this? At that time, the postal service had just created what was called an intelligent barcode, meaning tracking information on an envelope and using scan data at various points in the process. They could see where a piece of mail was. It was premised on the tracking of packages by FedEx or by the postal service. Leveraging that idea, we built the fi rst- ever ballot tracking system, not only for our staff — to make sure the ballots were getting where they should be, to make sure there was integrity — but it was a customer service tool, as well. A communications tool, an information tool. Voters can sign up for texts or voice mes- sages about the status of their ballot, so they get a message all the way through the process. Your ballot has been mailed, it’s on the way to you, Amber McReynolds helped bring mail-in voting to Denver. Now she’s pushing it around the country. Now multiple states are using it. California, Colorado uses it statewide, Nevada used it in 2020, Arizona uses it widely, Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina — it’s started to spread across the country. I think more than fi fty million voters in 2020 had access to that type of sys- tem to track their ballots. So it was very much transformational, and frankly just pushed the industry into a new way of thinking about things, to put voters fi rst. How did Colorado turn toward having full vote-by-mail elections? Western states have been far Mike Lindell, Pillow Kingdom founder and chief election denier, was in Colorado last week to push The Big Lie. it’s out for delivery with your carrier, and then when the elections offi ce receives the ballot. This system addresses all those key val- ues. It provides more fairness, it provides more accessibility, it provides security, it’s more transparent, it provides equity, and it makes the election more reliable. And we didn’t have to get a law changed to do it; it’s just creating a customer-service application. more expansive with options to vote broadly over time, going back to women’s suffrage — Colorado was the fi rst state to pass that on the ballot — so we’ve had a tradi- tion [of embracing change]. And Colorado was one of the fi rst states to do early voting. When vote by mail started to expand, Oregon was fi rst, Washington second, we were closely third. But it was driven by vot- ers. When we said you can request a mail ballot, fi rst you had to sign up every election. And then once we said you can sign up for all future elections, we saw almost 80 percent of Colorado voters opt in. They chose it them- selves. It wasn’t government saying, “You have to do it this way.” Voters were choosing that option; they were choosing that service. It was driven by voters and driven by this concept of good service. The benefi ts are vast. Voters are more edu- cated; they have time at home to think about the choices they’re making, and research them if they want to. You can’t have that experience when you’re standing in a booth. Our ballots are long, so we kind of need that time. But it was driven by the voters. And then in the 2012 election, the 20 percent of the voters who had not opted in were calling and saying “Where’s my ballot? Everybody got their ballot in the mail!” How did state leaders come to shape the Voter Access and Modernized Elections Act, HB13-1303, which allowed for election-day regis- tration and full voting by mail at the state level? In 2013, I was invited to go to a few meetings at the Capitol, with a small group of democracy- minded leaders on all sides of the aisle. At that time, I was director of elections for Denver. A few key clerks — Pam Anderson of Jefferson County, Hillary Hall of Boulder County, Tiffany Parker from La Plata County, and Sheila Reiner, who was the Mesa County clerk at the time — we were all there. Then more clerks started to get involved, but that was the initial cohort. The legislature and Speaker [Dickey Lee] Hullinghorst, they really wanted to modernize APRIL 14-20, 2022 WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | westword.com EVAN SEMÓN ALLISON JOYCE/GETTY IMAGES
