As election approaches, Pitkin County clerk and recorder explains the process

Leading up to an election, the Pitkin County clerk and recorder has a lot on her plate. 

Ingrid Grueter, the clerk and recorder for Pitkin County, has been working hard on the upcoming 2025 election to ensure that the residents of Pitkin County all have the opportunity to make their voices heard in the Nov. 4 local election. 

“These are the local issues, and this is where your local tax dollars are going, so this is your opportunity to really be involved on a more local level,” Grueter said. “Whether it’s school board or fire district, the county measures or the city measures, or the state, for that matter, this is more on a local level.”

Grueter will be available to answer questions from Pitkin County voters this Saturday at the second annual “Vote-A-Rama.” There voters can vote early, ask questions of the clerk and recorder, and get light refreshments and food from Paradise Bakery. The event will go from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Pitkin County Administration building, 530 E. Main St. in Aspen. 

Leading up to the election, Pitkin County, with Grueter’s help, coordinated with other local governments to make the election ballots. Between various special districts and city limits, Pitkin County has 15 ballot varieties being mailed out to the county. Those ballots were delivered between Oct. 15 and 17. 

Once ballots are mailed out, the next step in the election process begins.

Voters can request replacement ballots if they believe their ballot has issues or if their ballot was never delivered. If they’d like, voters can vote in person, or they can put their ballot in the mailbox to be picked up by USPS, or drop their ballots off at designated drop boxes for the county. 

However, as of Monday, voters are encouraged not to place their ballots in mailboxes due to the potential for shipping times to cause the ballot not to be received in time. Those boxes can be found at Snowmass Town Hall, 130 Kearns Rd., Basalt Town Hall, 101 Midland Ave., and at the Pitkin County Administration building, 530 E. Main St.

“After today, you shouldn’t be putting anything into the mail,” Grueter said. “You should be putting in a dropbox or voting in person.”

As the weeks turn into days and hours before the end of the election, the clerk and recorder’s bipartisan election judges can begin the process of counting the votes. 

“Friday (Oct. 31) is the first day that (ballots) will actually be scanned and tabulated,” Grueter said. “We cannot look to see results until election night.” 

On election night, the election judges work to count results quickly to deliver unofficial results as soon as possible. In the case of this local election, Grueter hopes that unofficial results will be delivered by the following day, Wednesday, Nov. 5. 

From there, there is a “cure period,” where voters whose ballots are flagged for signature issues are sought out to confirm their signature. Additionally, international ballots postmarked by Nov. 4 at 7 p.m. are counted after Nov. 4, while domestic ballots are not, so those international ballots are counted in the time following the election. 

Unofficial results are reviewed by a bipartisan canvas at the end of November. Board judges, consisting of a Democrat and a Republican, review the statistics on Nov. 25. They verify the results and sign off on the election. 

After the election is concluded, everything related to the election is kept for 25 months for potential review.