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Archive for the 'Clerk and Recorder Office' Tag

New motor vehicle office needs customers

October 13th, 2011, 9:29 am by

 

Branch offices often have long wait times but not many people have discovered the new main office on Garden of the Gods Road.

Don’t have much time to renew your driver’s license or get license plates for your car?

The main headquarters of the Motor Vehicle Division, which is part of the El Paso County Clerk and Recorder’s Office, reopened Tuesday at its new location, a former Intel building at 1675 W. Garden of the Gods Road.

But on Wednesday afternoon, there were hardly any customers at the new office. And a quick look at “real-time” waits at the three branch offices that offer the same services on a smaller scale showed wait times up to more than an hour.

Many motor vehicle division transactions also can be done online. Click here to go to the motor vehicle website.

Election costs breakdown: Mail-in versus precinct voting

August 1st, 2011, 9:00 am by

Sunday’s story about whether next year’s primary should be an all mail-in ballot or traditional polling place format generated several interesting comments, including this from Neil Talbott: “A mail-in ballot is perfectly acceptable, especially if it saves the county $71,000 in election costs, IF you can assure citizens that the vote count is accurate and verifiable.”

El  Paso County Clerk and Recorder Wayne Williams ran on a platform of “protecting voter  integrity” last fall when he was running for the office, so we’ll wait for his reply to a letter Talbott sent, asking what assurance the public has that the mail-in ballots are counted accurately, verification of ballot counts and other protective measures.

Several Colorado counties, including nearby Teller County, had problems with voter registration fraud in 2004 — 18 of the state’s 64 counties had registration rates greater than their voting-age populations, for example, which created exaggerated voter rolls.

 Some readers also asked for a breakdown of the estimated costs of next June’s primary election. Here they are, from the El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Office:

Mail Ballot: Ballot printing, mailing, postage: $295,560

Polling Place: $234,862

Mail Ballot: Election Judges/Personnel: $120,730

Polling Place: $376,600

Mail Ballot: Three Ballot-on-Demand Printers: $61,500

Polling Place: $0.00

Mail Ballot: Judges’ Materials: $0.00

Polling Place: $22,650

Mail Ballot: Election Printing and Supplies: $4,500

Polling Place: $31,700

Mail Ballot: Info cards mailed to unaffiliated voters: $69,520

Polling Place: $0.00

Mail Ballot: Other: $41,620

Polling Place: $7,700

 TOTAL: Mail Ballot: $593,430

             Polling Place: $664,512

Local election specialist to study Albanian election

May 3rd, 2011, 1:10 pm by

Emily Rome, who works as an election specialist in the El Paso County Clerk and Recorder’s Office, left for the Republic of Albania Tuesday, May 3, and will spend eight days there, studying the election process in the city of Tirana.

Rome took a temporary leave of absence from her job to volunteer with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a United Nations-chartered agency. Rome and another observer will monitor the city’s entire election, from the opening of the voting centers to ballot counting and tabulating the results.

Clerk and Recorder Wayne Williams said he hopes Rome brings back insights from the emerging democracy’s electoral process that can be applied in next year’s presidential election here.

Last year, Rome observed the presidential election in Ukraine, then later returned to watch the run-off election.

“Traveling to these foreign countries and seeing people’s struggles and challenges all to be able to cast a ballot in a newly free society is an unbelievable experience,” she said. In Ukraine, she saw elderly women and men climb steep staircases and stand in line in subzero temperatures to cast their ballots.

Rome will blog about her trip at the Clerk and Recorder Office’s website: http://car.elpasoco.com.