Mesa County Colorado List Of Voters Raises Doubts by Nancy Lofholm

Denver Post Western Slope Bureau

Reproduced under the Fair Use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use.

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Losing candidate says info withheld

Sunday, July 6, 2003, Grand Junction — Candidate Shari Bjorkland and her husband, Tom, asked for Mesa County voter lists last December so they could send Christmas cards to supporters thanking them for voting for Shari in her unsuccessful primary bid for Republican representative in statehouse District 55.

That request has now snowballed into legal wrangling between the Bjorklands and the Mesa County clerk's office amid charges by the Bjorklands that there were grievous errors in the primary election last August. After combing through records from the county clerk's office and the secretary of state, the Bjorklands say they believe many Mesa County residents' votes weren't counted.

Tom Bjorkland said he believes the county is withholding polling information. A Boulder-based nonprofit organization devoted to fair voting, Citizens for Accurate Mail Ballot Election Results, also is investigating.

"It sure looks darn suspicious when people act this way," said Al Kolwicz, director of the citizens election result group, after he spent a day recently sorting through nine boxes of voter ID cards and mail-in voting envelopes under the watchful eye of two note-taking employees of the Mesa County clerk's office.

The clerk's office initially gave the Bjorklands the primary voter lists they requested. The matter would have ended there, Tom Bjorkland said, if they hadn't noticed that some politically active citizens who had worked on Shari's campaign were not on those primary lists of those who voted. The Bjorklands began polling some of those people and were told they had voted.

The Bjorklands hired a research firm that polled 60 of those whose names were missing. Thirty-seven of those questioned indicated they had voted. A second analysis by a Grand Junction research firm found that 28 of 40 respondents claimed to have voted, but were not listed on county voting records.

Bjorkland and Kolwicz were allowed to go through boxes of polling cards and mail-in ballot envelopes in a search for the missing names after an attorney for the Bjorklands threatened legal action.

But so far the office has refused to allow Tom Bjorkland or Kolwicz to go through polling books where each voter's name is listed.

Mesa County chief deputy clerk Amy Storm-Farley said her office is turning over public records to Bjorkland. But she said her office can't turn over all records because of voter confidentiality.

She did admit the clerk's office made a serious error in that regard when it inadvertently sent out a list of more than 1,200 voters to Bjorkland and left the voters' social Security numbers on that list.

"We were very concerned about that. It wasn't something we took lightly at all," said Storm-Farley. She said her response to the mistake was to "have a conversation with" the worker who sent out the Social Security numbers.

Bjorkland returned that list as soon as the error was discovered.

Storm-Farley also said she was able to find out why there were discrepancies in the numbers of voters listed by her office and by the secretary of state's office. She said people who apply for absentee ballots are given voting credit on county records regardless of whether they vote or not.

Tom Bjorkland said the deeper he digs, the more numbers he is finding that don't jibe.

"I think the problem is extremely large throughout Mesa County," he said.

Mesa County used new Opti-scan computerized voting equipment rather than the old punch-card system for the first time last year.

Storm-Farley said she has not had any other reports about errors in that system.

Bjorkland said he is not spending money and time digging through records because his wife is a sore loser or because it would change the outcome of her bid for office.

"I'm not trying to harass anybody. I'm really not. I'm trying to get to the bottom of something I've uncovered," he said.

Shari Bjorkland was defeated in the primary by Gayle Berry, 3,515 votes to 2,861.

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Last modified 6/14/09