Election Day is fast approaching; this year it is on Tuesday, Nov. 4.

Ballots started being mailed on Oct. 11, and drop boxes opened Monday, Oct. 13. The Grand County Voter Service and Polling Center is located in the Grand County Administration Building in Hot Sulphur Springs at 308 Byers Ave. It opens every day but Sunday starting on Monday, Oct. 27; this is also the last day for the county to mail out ballots.

On Election Day, the voter service and polling center will be open until 7 p.m. 

Residents can also drop their ballots off at secure drop boxes, up until 7 p.m. on election night. Boxes are at the following locations:

• Hot Sulphur Springs: Grand County Administration Building, 308 Byers Ave.
• Kremmling: CSU Extension Hall, 210 11th St.
• Grand Lake: Grand Lake Town Hall, 1026 Park Ave.
• Granby: Granby Town Hall, Zero Jasper Ave.
• Fraser: Grand Park Community Recreation Center, 1 Main St.
• Winter Park: Winter Park Town Hall, 50 Vasquez Road

“We have staff trained and are confident in this election,” stated Grand County Clerk and Recorder Jolene Linke in an Oct. 6 email. “We’ve been employing election judges for two weeks to prepare the ballots and Tabor notices, which staff helped do also. There are school board elections, but no other candidates this election.”

Bipartisan teams of election “runners” hit the streets for the first time on Wednesday to pick up ballots from the drop boxes. Each team consists of at least one Republican and one Democrat, according to state law.

“Everything is going smoothly for us,” said Grand County Elections Lead Joni Morse. “It’s always exciting to start watching the ballots come in.”

A second round of pickups is being done on Friday. For the next two weeks, runners will collect ballots once a day Monday through Friday. Additional runs will occur on Saturday, Nov. 1. and on Election Day.

Grand County will begin counting ballots on Friday, Oct. 31, as required by state law.

“We count those so they get scanned into the Dominion system, but we don’t look at any results until 8 p.m. on Election Day,” Morse said. “We’re required to keep those ballots in secure storage, safe from fire, safe from water, and keep them for 25 months. Those are always on camera 24/7, sealed in a box with chain of custody logs.”

Helpful links for voting and registration

To register to vote online or to check your voter registration status, visit GoVoteColorado.gov. On this website, you can view your sample ballot, check the status of your mailed ballot, and other tools.

Check out the Election page on SkyHiNews.com to find articles about the elections, sample ballots of proposed measures and information about Grand County school board candidates, are also available on the “Election” page. 

Other links to prepare for voting are Grand County government’s elections page, BallotReady.org and BallotPedia.org.

The life of a ballot

Patty Brown, former deputy clerk and former elections judge, said that bipartisan teams of judges will pick up the ballots from the drop boxes.

During her long career in elections, Brown also wrote a series of online documents called “Mini Life of a Ballot” on the Grand County government page. These documents created in 2016 help the reader understand the complicated topic by breaking it down into seven chapters with visuals.

“My goal was to show how voted ballots are processed from the time they are put in a ballot box until the votes are counted,” she said.

To view these documents, visit Co.Grand.Co.Us and type “Mini Life of a Ballot” in the search bar. The seven chapters are: ballot return, signature verification, ballot processing, ballot review, ballot replication, ballot scanning and ballot tabulation.