Make your mail in vote, count

212 thousand mail in ballots went out in El Paso County for this year’s presidential election. It’s the most ever that’s gone out for an election in El Paso County. That’s why making it a mistake free mail in ballot is more important now than ever before.

The 2010 General Election had six thousand mail in ballots that had mistakes on them turning them into problem ballots which were kicked out of the vote counting machine. El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Election Expert, Alissa Van Der Veen tells me, “We had to duplicate or create another ballot to let it be counted by the equipment. Either the voter made a mistake on it or ripped it. It’s something that made it uncountable.”

Van Der Veen says some of the common mistakes include using anything other than a blue or black pen or, “When you use a sharpie it bleeds through the other side and it confuses the machine because it doesn’t know what mark to read.” When the ballot gets kicked out of the vote counting machine it goes to a team of judges, Republican and Democrat who try to figure out the intent of your vote and then create an identical ballot with those candidates or issues you picked.

Van Der Veen and her staff created a how to primer to make sure you mail in ballot is mistake free. Go to our front page, links we mentioned and click on it.