City Clerk continues to see ballot errors ahead of Colorado Springs General City Elections
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- The Colorado Springs City Clerk's Office reports an increase in ballot errors ahead of the upcoming April 4 election.
City Clerk, Sarah Johnson said so far, only about 13 percent of Colorado Springs residents have cast their ballots. She also said this time around they are seeing more errors on the ballots returned.
"It's important to vote for the April 4th election because you have the mayor, the council races and you have the question," said Johnson.
While there are fewer questions for voters during this election - residents are tasked with electing new city council members, a new mayor, and voting on one ballot issue - Johnson said these races are still important.
The clerk's office said it appears as though people are skimming through the questions and not fully reading before signing their ballots and sending them in.
"We just need people to slow down a little bit, because this one is a little different, because it's a vote for one, then a vote for three," said Johnson. "Right now, we have a little over 200 ballots that came back and were not signed so we've reached out to everybody and a few have come in, the form that we send you, you can sign it, scan it, email it back to us. You don't physically have to come in."
In several cases, voters are bubbling in more candidates than allowed. For example, in the mayoral race, some voters are picking two candidates instead of one.
If that's done by mistake, however, officials said people can make corrections.
"You can simply just scratch out, cross out the ones you don't want to vote for and just make sure we can tell your intent in that, and we can clearly say okay they stretched out this one, and they marked this one," said Johnson.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the city's received more than 42,500 ballots. There are 26 ballot drop-off boxes across the city. People will need to drop their ballot off or vote in person since the mail-in deadline has now passed.
For more information on the general municipal election, click here for KRDO's voter guide.
