Bent, Adams counties dealing with ballot delivery issues

DENVER, Oct. 25, 2018 - Bent County Clerk Patti Nickell announced today that she is re-issuing one-fifth of the 2,500 ballots in her southeastern county because they haven't been delivered and the U.S. Postal Service hasn't been able to locate them.

She reordered the new ballots, which are expected to arrive on Friday.

"We are going to work all day to get them out," she said today.

Bent is the second county this election where a significant number of voters did not receive their ballots in a timely manner. One-fourth of the ballots in Adams County also were held up although they were located and delivered today.

"Our office has visited the Post Office facility in Denver, and talked to clerks in these two counties as well as other clerks," Secretary of State Wayne Williams said. "Voting is a sacred right and we want everyone's voice to be heard."

Nickell said that the post offices in Wiley, McClave and Hasty on the county's eastern side have agreed to hand-cancel the 500 ballots going to area voters so the ballots won't have to be shipped to a major postal facility along the Front Range. In addition, Nickel said her office plans to have ballot-drop boxes available to those voters so they don't have to mail their ballots back to her office.

In Adams County, one of four trucks delivering ballots on behalf of the county's print vendor was turned away at the postal loading dock in Denver on Oct. 15 because it had "insufficient payment documentation for USPS to accept the shipment," the USPS said in a statement.

However, postal employees failed to escalate the situation, which is why the Post Office initially claimed there had been no delivery attempt. In addition, the Colorado Secretary of State's office has previously worked with the Post Office to ensure ballot delivery trucks are not turned away, but that didn't happen. To compound the problem, the driver for the print vendor never reported the problem to his supervisor and the vehicle and the ballots sat in a locked lot for more than a week.

The problems were discovered when Adams County voters this week asked about the status of their ballots.

The mid-term election is Nov. 6.