Crested Butte voter rolls getting cleaner before the November election

The goal is to educate and motivate

by Mark Reaman

The joint Crested Butte-Gunnison County initiative to clean up the town of Crested Butte voter rolls seems to have moved some people to action.

The county mailed letters to all registered voters with a mailing address of a post office box in the 81224 zip code three weeks ago with the request to update voter information, particularly in regard to physical addresses. The idea was that some people had moved out of the town without changing their address and were thus receiving town ballots at their post office box instead of the appropriate ballot.

According to Gunnison County election division manager Diane Folowell, more than 300 of the letters have been returned to the county office. “We have had a pretty hefty response: 317 letters have been mailed back to us and six more people have made changes online for a total of 30,” Folowell said. “Of those, 302 have been address changes. Most of those, 269, were physical address changes within the town of Crested Butte itself. Thirty-one people had moved out of the county or the state and they signed an affirmation requesting that their names be removed from the town’s voter rolls.”

So thus far, 17 people responded that they had moved out of Crested Butte and into the county and updated their physical address with this process. Folowell said that approximately 30 undeliverable letters were returned, which will trigger another mailing process to locate these voters.

Crested Butte town clerk Lynelle Stanford said the initiative seems to be working pretty well. “The project to clean up the voter rolls was specifically timed to have an effect in time for this year’s election,” she said. “The education component was intended to inform voters of their legal obligation to provide accurate information, including up-to-date physical addresses. There are two components: educating and informing people and prompting them to take the step to update their information. We are optimistic as the changes are coming into the Elections Office.”

Stanford emphasized that the state push to make it easier for people to vote probably opened some cracks in the system but Crested Butte is just one of many places dealing with those cracks.

“As legislation around elections has evolved, one objective has been to make it easy for a registered voter to vote, which led to mail-in ballots. Mail-in ballots brought forth the voter roll question. Other areas of Colorado experience similar issues with physical and mailing addresses,” Stanford explained. “Our goals are to educate people and to motivate them to update their information. No matter if we do a local election or a coordinated election with the county, the voter roll list is generated from the statewide voter registration system and is provided by the county. So, this effort is important regardless.”

Folowell agrees that future vigilance is important. “We have suggested to the town of Crested Butte that it may want to consider contracting with the county in future years in order to keep their rolls as current as possible,” said Folowell. “Due to the ski area and WSCU making it a very transient population, those rolls are always going to have some discrepancies.”

Ballots for this fall’s election will be mailed in the middle of October.