2012 General Election Vote Center Plan

PURPOSE

Arapahoe County Clerk and Recorder Nancy A. Doty has determined, based on the dramatic increase of mail-in balloting in the County, that it is not cost effective to continue to staff and support the nearly 200 polling places in the County. She is considering implementing a Vote Center voting process to be in place for the 2012 General Election.

Vote Centers are similar to Early Vote in that on Election Day any voter in Arapahoe County can vote at any Vote Center, regardless of where the voter lives in the County. The basic elements of a Vote Center are multiple electronic voting stations and a real time electronic poll book, which requires computer stations and live connectivity with the State of Colorado Electronic Pollbook application.

We anticipate that this will result in the savings of significant amounts of tax dollars.

INFORMATION

The law requires that, prior to conducting a Vote Center Election at a General Election, either a November election in an odd numbered year or the Primary Election must first be conducted as a Vote Center Election. Ms. Doty conducted the November 1, 2011 Coordinated Election as a Vote Center Election to meet this requirement and received very positive feedback from voters about the change.

1. In November of 2011 Arapahoe County successfully operated 17 Vote Centers utilizing:

• Approximately 200 electronic voting machines with voter verifiable paper audit trail print units
• 95 computer stations

2. In November of 2012 we plan to operate 32 Vote Centers utilizing:

• Approximately 600 voting machines
• Approximately 250 computer stations

3. Facilities to be used are primarily schools, churches and public buildings. Sites will be generally 1,000 – 3,000 useable square feet to accommodate voting machines, computer check in stations and voter waiting space for check in and machine voting.
4. Each Vote Center will have live connectivity between the State of Colorado Electronic Pollbook and the computer check in stations at the site. This is necessary to provide assurance that no voter can vote twice. We will conduct a connectivity test for each site on August 1, 2012 to test primary and backup connectivity solutions.
5. The electronic pollbook will be a live interactive connection with each computer at each site. A backup of the pollbook will be available in each location on a portable data storage device to be available to be loaded on one or more computers at the site if necessary. At least one computer on site will have a UPS backup unit available to maintain limited operations in event of a short term power failure.
6. Each Vote Center will have backup connectivity capabilities.
7. Each Vote Center will be able to provide for provisional ballots as necessary.
8. Voting will be done on Edge Voting Machines which meet the needs of voters with disabilities.
9. Each site will have at least one person from County Information Technology (IT) Services to oversee the computer and technical aspects of the site.
10. Technical Consultants for support of the Edge Voting Machines will be assigned.
11. Approximately 400 poll workers will be hired for the November 6, 2012 General Election.
12. All but one of the sites used as Early Voting sites will also be used as Vote Centers on Election Day. We anticipate eight Early Voting sites in the 2012 General Election.
13. Mail-in ballots will automatically be sent to all voters who have requested them.
14. A list of the proposed sites is included as part of this plan.

VOTE CENTER LOCATIONS

(To view a countywide map of the Vote Centers, please click here.)