1. Higher voter participation cannot be consistently attributed to mail-in voting. Voter participation increases according to what is at stake in an election more than to the effect of any one given method of voting.

Granting Colorado clerks and recorders the power to eliminate precinct-polling places in both General and off-year elections would reduce the quality of elections in the state of Colorado over the long run.

1. The citizen oversight inherent in precinct voting is lost.

In spite of efforts to eliminate precinct polling, significant percentages of Colorado voters insist on voting in private in a polling booth. Our clerks thus far have been willing to accommodate such voters, but in some cases with as few precinct-polling places or voting service centers as possible.

Click here for subsection C: Lower Quality Elections: http://cfvi.us/?q=node/159

Precinct-polling places offer more accessible elections than the increasingly centralized, professionalized, high-tech elections promoted by Colorado county clerks and recorders.

1. Precinct polling allows more citizen participation and oversight than mail-in elections. Precinct polling allows for observation of voters signing the poll book.

1. Watchers and authorized observers must not be subject to a six-foot limit during the following steps in the election process except when voters’ personal information is present:

• logic and accuracy testing
• mail ballot processing
• post-casting processing of ballots voted in a polling place, vote center, or service center
• hand counting
• auditing

1. The Colorado Open Meetings law (C.R.S. 24-6-402(1)(d)) should be amended to require meetings to be open to the public that involve formal and informal groups of more than two elected officials attending as part of their official role.