She’s Got Mail continued from page 15 move and you don’t update your address, your ballot will be returned to the election offi ce, and you’re going to have to take action. You will have to vote in person or contact the offi ce. We have an address validation process using national change-of-address data, but we also just use the mail to validate that someone is who they say they are. Next is validation on the back end, and signature verifi cation is the current method of validation in most states. Colorado does a great job with standards, and there are poli- cies that dictate how that works, and there is transparency around the process. Watchers can observe that process. And then on the ballot-counting side, you can go watch ballots move through the counting process. It’s all paper ballots. We have a paper ballot for every vote cast. There are further validations: How many voters are in this precinct, how many ballots were cast. All of that happens with the audits. So when people say there is this massive-scale fraud, there is just no evidence of that based on all of the audits, all of the touchpoints in the system where these numbers are validated. Then voter fraud — individual situations — it is incredibly diffi cult for voters to get away with it, because we have all those touchpoints. One case, Steve Curtis, who used to be the Republican party state chair and was then a radio host for a while, in 2016 he was claiming there was going to be massive fraud. Well, he lives in Weld County, and Weld County caught him trying to cast his wife’s ballot. And they did that with these processes we have in place. They prosecuted him, and he has a felony on his record now. So we have these processes in place, and the system actually catches voters who are bad actors and are trying to do something wrong, but it’s incredibly rare that people try to do that. Most people just want to cast their ballot. So just to break things down: If I got a mail ballot, and I fi lled it out and turned it in, and then I tried to go to a polling place and vote, what would happen? When you return that ballot, the minute they capture that barcode and that signature that says that you are you, you’re marked as having voted. So if you go in person to vote, they would say, “I’m sorry, but we show that you returned a mail ballot.” They would prob- ably have the exact date and an image of your returned envelope. And if you said, “Well, I didn’t return that ballot,” they would have you vote using what is called a provisional ballot, and those are set aside for extra validation. And then they would go back and check that provisional ballot and your statement and what you said versus the record they have on fi le. But you would not be able to cast a regular ballot, because you already returned one, and they know that in real time. Same situation if you try to go to another county. The election offi cials will catch that, because of the real-time connectivity of the state voter registration system. 16 What about the idea that ballots could somehow go astray in the mail? Ballot tracking is the best way to guard against that. If a voter doesn’t receive their As these Capitol Hill mailboxes show, mail ballots have proved popular in Denver. pandemic was roaring. We were nonparti- san. We worked with red states, blue states, purple states, and helped implement best practices at the national level. Now I work with various organizations. Vote by mail is obviously in my portfolio, but also just good election practices gener- ally. So I advise states to implement good auditing systems, transparency mechanisms, technology enhancements. I do a lot to en- courage states to enhance their technology services to voters. Ranked-choice voting is something I’ve also been working on at various levels of government. But all my work centers around this idea of putting voters fi rst, solving problems, providing solutions, and modernizing and renewing our election structure. What do you expect to see in the 2022 and 2024 elections in terms of voting? We’re going to continue to see voters expect convenient options. Texas tried to make it diffi cult for voters to vote by mail. An incredible number of Republicans did not get their votes counted, and an incredible number of Democrats and One of our biggest challenges are the disinformation, misinformation, lies and conspiracies. It is a security issue. Until law enforcement starts to truly hold people ac- countable who are attacking the system, we are going to continue to see the distrust rise, because those people who are distrusting the system are being told the wrong infor- mation by their political leaders, which is very dangerous. I think election offi cials are going to con- tinue to have very diffi cult jobs. The more transparent election offi cials can be, the better they will be able to push back and fi ght the disinformation. It is devastating to watch the Ukraine situation, because it very much is an attack on democracy, but one of the things that has been inspirational for me is that President Zelensky — and our intelligence services — President Zelensky has been highly trans- parent with what his needs are and what is happening on the ground. We’ve never seen that level of transparency before. I think that kind of approach to transpar- ency is a good path for election offi cials across the country to approach elections. Because it’s hard to combat a very transparent process. ballot, they can contact the offi ce or they can go in person. Those situations happen, but it’s pretty rare. But ballot tracking provides immediate notifi cation and gives voters visibility to know if something goes awry. The ballot was mailed on this date, I haven’t received it yet, the postal system has no further tracking information on it — they can see that. That’s why that kind of system further pro- tects and secures the integrity of the process. What elements of the processes that you helped put into place in Colorado are you now helping to implement on the national scale? I helped found the organization called the National Vote at Home Institute, and I went there in 2018. I fi nished my contract with them last year, but my work contin- ues. The National Vote at Home Institute was designed to help states improve and enhance their vote-by-mail processes. We did a ton of work in 2020 to help states as the Independents also did not get their votes counted. It’s an example of what a legislature thought was a good idea, but it impacted voters of all political stripes, and they disen- franchised people by those policies. We might see some of these folks who are passing policies that are driven by the conspiracies and lies around elections pass- ing policies that are a disservice to their own electorate start to rethink. I think in the midterms, we will see how turnout is; we will see how engaged people are. It’s also interesting to watch how people change their voting behavior. In 2020, most people in the United States voted before election day. Most votes were cast and even processed before election day. I think that is a change in the campaign dynamic that will continue. Clearly, voters of all political stripes want convenient options, and we are going to continue to see voting early, whether it be vote by mail or voting before election day [by other means]. Recently, a group of county clerks gathered at the Capitol, and that was essentially a call for transparency: Come forward if you have information about voter fraud, put it to law enforcement. Right? Yes, and I have had people say, “This will create fraud,” or “I know of this instance happening,” and I would always say, “Did you turn that in to law enforcement?” Be transparent. If you have evidence, why aren’t you reporting it to the authorities? If folks are going to say those things, they need to show up with evidence that a court of law would consider — not evidence on a conspiracy-theory website, but evidence in a court of law that has a process to consider the integrity of the evidence. The attack on Dominion Voting Sys- tems, which is based here in Colorado, their lawsuits are one of the only accountability mechanisms happening at the moment. They were attacked and defamed in a deliber- ate way to destroy their brand and destroy their name. They’ve been an incredible Colorado company, supported elections here for a long time and supported many states, and I fi nd it odd that they were singled out with all this misinformation. Accountability needs to happen for those who have attacked our democracy in this way. It is really important. What about safety of clerks? Some people have received threats. Can you respond to that? Election administration, it’s critical infra- structure. That not only includes buildings and technology, but also the people who run the process. Bad actors and perpetra- tors need to be held accountable. These are offi cials acting in an offi cial capacity, and anybody who tries to interfere with them doing their jobs and following the law needs to be held accountable. We have to make sure we have the right accountability structures for that to hap- pen. There can be more done at the federal level. Certainly the Department of Justice is looking at some of these things, and I hope all of the federal agencies involved really take a hard look at the accountability mechanisms on this. But we also need to make sure that elec- tion offi ces have the funding they need to secure their operations, run their processes and have sustainable funding for elections over time; elections have been underfunded for decades. So making sure election offi ces have the resources they need to do their jobs and protect their offi ces. Their staff really matters. And if there is a clerk who provides an insider threat or who is not following the law, then we need to make sure we have the right accountability for that person. We have to recognize that there are going to be bad actors, so we have to have the right account- ability in place for that. And the threats — I had to hire private security. One of those crazy sites started targeting me. There was this guy who was posting pictures of my kids and saying that I should be hung outside of my house for my kids to see because I’m a traitor. I turned it all over to law enforcement, FBI and local. And I hired security for a few weeks, from mid-November to Christmas [of 2020]. And I know what I experienced was nowhere near APRIL 14-20, 2022 WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | westword.com EVAN SEMÓN
