Richard Randall Show, Wayne Williams, July 19, 2013
Station: KVOR, 740 AM
Show: Richard Randall Show
Guests: Williams, W.
Link: http://www.kvor.com/page.php?page_id=321
Date: July 19, 2013
Topics: Deadlines, Secretary of State, Scott Gessler, Jeff Hays, El Paso County GOP Chariman, Petitions, Successors, UOCAVA (Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act), Senate District 11, John Morse, Jaxine Bubis, Bernie Herpin, Voting Service and Polling Centers, Same Day Registration, HB-13-1303, Online Registration, govotecolorado.com Website, Voter Fraud Bill, Election Modernization Act, Mail In Ballots
PASO COUNTY CLERK & RECORDER WAYNE WILLIAMS: But I wanted to come on and make sure your listeners knew kind of what the calendar is from now.
HOST RICHARD RANDALL: Okay.
WILLIAMS: And so the first deadline people need to be aware of is Monday, July 29th, is when successor petitions are due. And you can turn in a successor petition to run if you’re Democrat, if you’re Republican, if you’re associated with a minor party, if you’re not affiliated at all. And there are specific requirements that those petitions have to have. You can get that information from the Secretary of State’s office and those petitions have to be turned in to the Secretary of State’s office.
RANDALL: And so when Jeff Hays was talking about signatures, I don’t want people to be confused. We’re not talking about signatures for the recall election itself. It is signatures to be on the ballot as one of the candidates.
WILLIAMS: That’s right because no party has the ability to just nominate somebody. The individual actually has to go out and gather the petitions. They can be helped by other people.
RANDALL: Right.
WILLIAMS: Once that happens, the Secretary of State verifies those petitions, certifies the ballot and we begin preparing those. The first set of ballots that go out are to the military and overseas voters. We’re hoping to get those out no later than Friday, August 9th to mail to those UOCAVA [Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act] voters. We’ll be emailing. We’re already going to be contacting the service members, letting them know it’s coming. And so, they get, under the law a little bit of extra time in case they’re deployed.
RANDALL: Good!
WILLIAMS: And that’s a good thing.
RANDALL: I think it is.
WILLIAMS: And then we’re also going to be working with our printer. By law, we have to mail out those ballots by the 23rd — by the 23rd of August. We hope to get them out by the Monday, instead of the Friday, which would August 19th. We try to get our voters as much opportunity to vote in El Paso County as possible. Once those mail ballots go out –
RANDALL: And that would be Republican, independent, unaffiliated, and Democratic voters. You’re sending ballots to all these people and making it equal –. I just want to be clear, because you’ve always been so good in this county about trying to exclude anybody who is not authorized to vote, while at the same time making sure that people who are entitled to vote have an easy, simple process and access to the ballot.
WILLIAMS: We absolutely want everyone who is legally entitled to vote to have that opportunity to do so. And so, those ballots go out. But then we’ll also have a series of voting service and polling centers. That’s a new provision under the law. And those are open beginning – and yes, you’ll love this, — on Labor Day!
RANDALL: Oh, my gosh! [laughs]
WILLIAMS: We’re going to have all four of our motor vehicle offices as the voter service polling centers. That puts more than 99% of the voters in Senate District 11 within 10 minutes of a voting service and polling center.
RANDALL: Wow!
WILLIAMS: And they will be open from 8 to 5, Monday through Saturday, and then the Monday and Tuesday of the election, and actually on the Election Day itself, they will be open 7 to 7. So, we are going to provide a lot of opportunities for folks to come in and vote in person. So, if you get your mail ballot, you don’t like to vote by mail, you still have that opportunity to vote in person. If you want to vote it by mail you can mail it back in, you can drop it off at any of our four offices. And we’re actually going to have for the first time, 24 hour drop off at all four of our offices.
RANDALL: Wow!
WILLIAMS: We tried it this last year at our main office on Garden of the Gods. It was so popular that we expanded the size of that box. And then we are adding drop boxes as well, downtown at Centennial Hall, at our southeast office by Peterson Air Force Base, and the north office in Briargate. All of those will have 24 hour drop off. We are also working with Manitou [Springs] and the city of Colorado Springs for the Friday – last Friday before the election, the Monday the day before the election, and the Tuesday of the election, for those two city clerks’ offices to be open to receive ballots as well. And so, we’re trying to give folks the maximum opportunity possible for them to vote, if they’re legally eligible to do so. And it’s not that hard to register in Colorado. You just —
RANDALL: That was my next question. Is this only for people who have already registered? Did they have to vote in the last election? Can people still go out and register? Do they need to register with a particular party? All of those things.
WILLIAMS: You do not have to be registered in any particular party. If you want a ballot mailed to you, you should go online to govotecolorado.com. That’s govotecolorado.com. You know, my daughter just turned eighteen a couple months ago. She went on, registered to vote, came downstairs, and said, “Dad, that was too easy.”
RANDALL: [laughs]
WILLIAMS: She was thinking it would be a complicated process. And it’s really not. It’s really an excellent website the Secretary of State’s office has developed. It makes it easy for people to register. And the sooner you register, the better, because that makes it so that you’re definitely in that first batch of mail ballots that go out. We will then continue to send mail ballots up until deadlines are reached. And at that point, folks will need to register in the office, or come into one of the voter service and polling centers for that — those eight days of voting, that Monday through Saturday and that Monday-Tuesday. And they can register to vote and get a ballot at the same time.
RANDALL: Yeah, and I’m a procrastinator. I do not want to encourage people to do this, but I know that part of that procrastination for me and a lot of other people is just that we’ve got very, very busy, hectic days and lives. If somebody were in a situation where it was within those eight days, am I right to assume that they could actually show up at the office and say, “Look, I need to register,” and then I can go ahead and vote after I do that?
WILLIAMS: Absolutely.
RANDALL: Okay.
WILLIAMS: And you can do that. Of course, it’s also incredibly easy to take a minute or two, register online, your ballot comes to you, you don’t have to go anywhere. And so the best method, if you want to spend the least time possible: Register now, you can also verify your information, if you’re not sure, if you think you might have moved and you’re not sure if you updated it, because we do not forward mail ballots.
RANDALL: Good!
WILLIAMS: It’s important that the individual actually be there. And so you can go to online, to govotecolorado.com, change your registration to indicate it needs to go to this address. If you are, for example, a college student here, and you’re home for the summer, and you live in Colorado but you go to school in Wyoming or Utah, you can change your address for the mailing so it goes directly to you at your college. If you’re still going to be here in that August 19th to 23rd time frame when we mail out the ballots, you don’t need to do that, you probably don’t want to do that. But if you’re heading out early to college, but Colorado is still your home, you still have that opportunity to vote here.
RANDALL: All right. That — I mean, that covers it. That gives us a road map of where we go from here. That’s Clerk and Recorder Wayne Williams. We take a short intermission. We try and get in as many phone calls as we can, we’ve got full phone lines, but priority is Bernie Herpin, is on hold. He is ready to go. We’ll hear from him about yesterday’s developments and where we go from here on the Morse recal
