Nonpartisan election hotline sees uptick in calls ahead of Election Day
KDVR Fox 31
DENVER (KDVR) -- As the clock ticks away the final 24 hours until Election Day, the Just Vote Colorado coalition is standing by to field questions and concerns from Colorado voters.
"Lots of voters from all across the state are calling in," said Kristin Bronson, executive director for the Colorado Lawyers Committee. "That’s kind of interesting to see. We have rural counties, we have urban counties, we have a lot of new voters."
In fact, because there are a lot of new voters, the ballot was a bit longer this year and the word is getting out about the election protection hotline, the call center has seen more calls than they have in previous years. In past years, the hotline received anywhere between 200 and 300 calls at this point ahead of the election, now they are seeing more than 500 calls coming in.
"We are getting more calls this year than we typically do," said Aly Belknap, executive director for Common Cause Colorado. "And we’re glad because that means we’ve done our job to get the number out there to make sure folks know that we have support for them ready to respond right now."
The 24/7 hotline, 866-OUR-VOTE, has been the collaborative work of Just Vote Colorado and other organizations for nearly 20 years including Common Cause Colorado and the Colorado Lawyers Committee, which staffs the hotline.
"We go through an extensive training in the lead-up to the elections," Bronson said. "So, we really prepare our volunteers for all kinds of questions that might come up. We also help each other during this whole process. We’re in a big room together, we ask questions of each other, we’re triaging the issues."
Questions mostly revolve around the election process including who is eligible to vote or how late is too late to register.
"We’re also seeing folks that have waited maybe the day or two before the election and now they suddenly realize they’ve messed up their ballot in some way or they can’t find their mail-in ballot, or they don’t know how to vote, or they want to go in person and they don’t know where to go," Bronson said.
With a current theme of mistrust in the voting system among voters, a new question volunteers said they are seeing is on election security. Belknap said she and others hope to put voters' minds at ease.
"We actually lead the nation in security. Many other states take what we’ve learned and innovated here in Colorado and adopt it for their state’s election systems," Belknap said.
Along with volunteers answering the hotline calls, Belknap said her organization has 250 poll monitors volunteering across the state in the remaining hours, watching for voter intimidation, accessibility issues, election administration issues and challenges to voter eligibility.
"We want to show folks that there’s support available to you, our election system is safe and secure, this process is for you, your vote counts, your voice matters."
Anyone with questions or concerns about the election is encouraged to call the hotline at 866-OUR-VOTE.
If you are not registered to vote, it is never too late to register. But, if you would like to do so and vote in this election, you must do so before 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Election Day. You can visit a service center in your county and they will be able to get you registered, and you can vote on the spot, or if there’s enough time, you can take your ballot with you and drop it off at a ballot drop box.