Colorado clerks look to livestreaming for ballot box transparency

More Colorado counties are considering installing cameras to livestream ballot drop box activity in an effort to increase transparency and dispel voting fraud conspiracies.

This will be the first presidential election El Paso County has livestream cameras installed at its 42 drop boxes. The county had them in action ahead of last year’s fall municipal elections.

“I’m giving people the ability to find their own answers,” El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Steve Schleiker said. “People would bring up ‘2,000 Mules,’ and so I’m like ‘Here are the tools. Prove it.’ Since I launched these cameras, I have not gotten one report or (Colorado Open Records Act) request.”

“2,000 Mules” is a 2022 conspiracist political film that falsely claimed left-wing groups illegally stuffed drop boxes with ballots for President Joe Biden in 2020. Election deniers point to the film as evidence of widespread voter fraud and vulnerabilities in the election system, especially mail-in ballot systems, but its claims have been debunked. Ballot gathering is legal in some form in 35 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In Colorado, people are allowed to collect and return up to 10 ballots.

“Election officials are facing heightened scrutiny since 2020, and they’re increasingly looking for ways to open up more processes to the public, using transparency to welcome public observation into the process to show that they’re following the law and they’re doing everything they can to run a secure and accurate election,” said Derek Tisler, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice. “Livestreaming in particular, has been a popular tool on this front.”

Clerks can also use livestreaming technology to show ballot counting, sorting, audits and “aspects of the election that have been subject to confusion and rumors,” Tisler said.

Colorado statute requires 24/7 video surveillance on the state’s drop boxes. Recordings are subject to the state’s open record law, but those requests can easily rack up thousands of dollars in fees for the requester.

The difference is that El Paso County now has a system for interested election watchers to monitor people walking or driving up to drop boxes and returning their ballot in real time.

Each camera, purchased from the Golden-based company Sensera Systems, cost about $5,000 and are standalone with a wireless network and power. The total cost for the cameras was about $176,000, according to the contract between the county and Sensera.

“Not every county has the budget to afford this kind of technology, but it’s been good for El Paso County,” said Matt Crane, executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association. “This is a way to help build voter confidence.”

The cameras also come equipped with night vision and motion detection technology. The streams are publicly available online, and motion-triggered events are uploaded to cloud storage.

“My board and I thought this was something that we absolutely needed to do, so we went ahead and invested in it,” Schleiker said.

Though El Paso County is currently the only county that actively livestreams drop box footage, Pueblo County is looking to implement the practice in the future, according to spokesperson Anthony Mestas. Douglas County is in the installation and testing phase of adding cameras to drop boxes, but there is not a timeline for when they will go live, according to a statement from Clerk Sheri Davis.

Concerns over mail-in voting and drop box activity are likely to grow among right-wing activists as clerks begin sending ballots to Colorado voters this month. Heidi Ganahl, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2022, has called for citizens to physically monitor drop boxes this year.

“It was very reckless, where she said she’s going to raise money in case they get arrested watching drop boxes,” Crane said. “There is an ability for watchers to observe boxes, but they aren’t allowed to engage with voters. But what she’s saying implies that they’re planning to go beyond law. That’s dangerous with the tinder boxes that are our elections right now.”

This story was originally published by Colorado Newsline