Colorado Voices
Meet the election judges behind La Plata County’s voting process
Clip | 4m 26sVideo has Closed Captions
Selected community members in La Plata County began training as election judges.
Election judges collect ballots from drop boxes, verify signatures, greet voters at service centers and work late into the night on Election Day tabulating votes. More importantly, these judges are local community members who dedicate two to three weeks of their time before the election, working for minimum wage to help ensure a fair and efficient voting process.
Colorado Voices
Meet the election judges behind La Plata County’s voting process
Clip | 4m 26sVideo has Closed Captions
Election judges collect ballots from drop boxes, verify signatures, greet voters at service centers and work late into the night on Election Day tabulating votes. More importantly, these judges are local community members who dedicate two to three weeks of their time before the election, working for minimum wage to help ensure a fair and efficient voting process.
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So people think campaigning is strictly you have a button or a hat or whatever.
Those obviously the election judge the greeters are going to be trained.
You can't have that into a voting center.
We need this completely neutral.
So election judges are community members that have signed up either through the party, major party to volunteer their time.
They are paid.
They're the ones that are working from when the ballots are first received to signature to signature verification to the mail ballot process, to tabulation.
They are our eyes and ears to the entire election process.
My name is Jade Pruett and I'm from Durango, Colorado, and I work as an election judge for La Plata County.
I got started because I was just writing an article for the school newspaper and just the security steps I'd say that go into counting a mail ballot surprised me right off the bat, and I just graduated college, so I'm back again.
My name is Cori Owens.
I'm an election judge here in La Plata County.
I've been doing this for about 14 years.
My mom was an election judge and she used to go to people's homes, and they would do one day voting.
Of course, you know, this is years ago.
And now it just instilled in me when I finally retired from teaching, that I would like to get into this.
My name is Ed Cash.
I decided to become an election judge when I retired and it was kind of a natural fit.
I was a social studies teacher and a political science major, and have always been interested in policy and politics.
I had over 400 people sign up here in La Plata County.
I only need 90 or so, but it's different than just a one day volunteering.
They have to go through extensive training, so it's up 4 to 6 hours with online and in person.
It's had not a part time.
Come on in one day.
It's a full time job with credentialing.
Like Tiffany was saying the ballot styles there are 34.
Right.
And it's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
Okay.
It's okay.
There's always a new challenge of the day, whether it's realizing that, like yesterday, you made a mistake and you need to go back in and program an accent mark above somebody's name or a service center here.
They had way more people than we ever anticipated.
And so we need somebody to deploy them like ballot inventory right now.
Immediately.
And it needs to be an hour away right now.
I would say that for about 8 or 10 days, I may work like 4 or 5 hours a day, and then Election Day itself could be I've worked 14 or 16 hours on an election day.
We stay until it's done.
And and that might be 9 or 10, 11:00 at night.
I appreciate them so much.
We couldn't do our jobs without them.
There's no way we can maintain the volume of work that we receive just with our current staff.
I think it's really important to have, local people that are engaged and committed to that community versus hiring it as a job when they see their local friends, neighbors, school members, church members, committee members, they're like, oh, so-and-so's working it.
It makes them feel it's more trustworthy.
They're representing our local issues and the community.
We know the people.
Lots of times.
You know what they're going through, if they've moved or whatever, you can really help them out.
I would love for people to become election judges.
It is a wonderful way to be involved in your community, to work with really strong members of your community, to make your community safer, better.
We get along when we work together.
When life gives you a house, move it.
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