SWAT team helped tally votes  (CO)
Cassie Hewlings and Tom McGhee    Denver Post   07 November 2007

Denver's problem-plagued election office was marred Tuesday by delays in posting results and unanticipated voter turnout that led to a SWAT team helping to count ballots.

Updates to the Denver County website were promised by 7:05 p.m., but a server problem kept the election commission from uploading the results to denvergov.org and caused an hour-long delay from the posting of the first update, said technology spokeswoman Molly Rauzi .

The problem wasn't fixed at 10 p.m., and the site displayed an error message that read, "We are currently experiencing difficulties. We will have election results posted momentarily."

The site is such a major tool to communicate effectively and efficiently that it's really unfortunate not to have the it available to the election commission tonight, the night of all nights," Rauzi said.

"We were prepared to put our results on the website," said clerk and recorder Stephanie O'Malley. "The onus of the problem is on the technology services department. They owned up to that mistake."

The Denver Elections Division sent out more than 209,000 ballots for Tuesday's election.

Tina Romero, a spokeswoman for the elections division, said about 90,000 ballots, or 47 percent, had been mailed in, which she said was surprising.

A total of 20,00 ballots were returned Tuesday, 11,00 of which had been counted as of 9:15 p.m. By midnight, Denver County still had about 20,000 ballots to count, O'Malley said.

City officials called in members of the Denver SWAT team to count ballots in a second shift at 10 p.m., after volunteers in the first shift, some of whom had been working since 5:30 a.m., "ran out of steam," said Michael Scarpello, director of elections.

"We had that contingency. We didn't think we'd need that contingency," he said.The police are a natural fit because they've undergone background checks, a requirement to handle ballots, Scarpello added.

The decision on which officers to send was left to police, he said.

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper said he was "going to wait until I hear all the facts before I have any judgment," on Tuesday's election.

A panel appointed by the mayor recommended in December that Denver switch from a three-person commission to a single elected clerk and recorder with oversight for elections. Voters approved the move in January.