Dear Editor,

This is in response to a Letter to the Editor in The Mountain-Ear on 12/21/2023 from Kathleen Balfour about the election process.

I have been a poll worker (pre-mail in ballot system) and election judge in Gilpin County since at least 2004. I was disturbed but not really surprised by Ms. Balfour’s letter. Ms. Balfour has minimal experience as an election judge and her language appears to be influenced by the repeatedly and credibly debunked “Big Lie” of her party’s Dear Leader. I experienced how rudimentary the election system was before mail-in ballots were activated in 2012 and feel safe in saying that Colorado’s election system is one of the best and safest in the country.

The first four issues she raised were minor and caught easily because of designed fail-safes in the system, though she made them sound like serious flaws. The fifth issue that she made much of, that the same software vendor does the Election Risk Limiting Audit and the Election, is untrue. Dominion does the Election, then in-house software developed by the Colorado Department Of State’s office processes the Risk Limiting Audit data generated by the bipartisan Election Judge teams.

Here is more information about this from the RLA FAQ page: “Q4. How does Colorado perform the audit? A4. During a comparison audit, counties are given a list of specific ballots to examine and then replicate the voter markings in an open source software application created by the Colorado Department of State specifically to facilitate the audit. The source code for the software can be found following this link (https://github.com/cdos-rla/colorado-rla). Further details about the audit can be found in the next few questions.”

The link to the RLA FAQ page: (https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/ elections/RLA/faqs.html).

Respectfully submitted,

Eric Douglas

Gilpin County