Colorado Secretary of State's office reviews smartphone voter registrations

DENVER, March 11, 2016 -- The Secretary of State’s office has launched a technical review to determine why some Coloradans who used certain smartphones to update their voter information were unable to complete the transaction.

In some cases, voters were unaware there was a problem until they looked up their registration in order to figure out where they were supposed to caucus on March 1. The Secretary of State’s office and political parties allowed those voters to participate in the caucuses after they signed affirmations that they had either registered to vote or changed their existing registration to be able to participate in the Republican or Democratic caucuses.

The Secretary of State’s office initially reported that it knew of only 14 instances where internal records show Coloradans had started a transaction on a mobile device but it never was completed. Election officials then discovered that on some phones, users were unable to scroll to the bottom of the form that contains the “submit” button, so they did not complete the final step.

The exact number of registrations that were affected is still unknown. The IT staff continues copious testing to try to confirm the device and browser combinations that locked the scroll functions.

"The mobile device world is constantly changing and we are working to ensure this does not occur again,” said Secretary of State Wayne Williams. “Once the specific individuals who may have been affected are identified, I have directed that we individually contact each voter.”

In the meantime, all visitors to GoVoteColorado.com are being directed to a version of the site that is not mobile optimized but is fully functional regardless if visited via a computer or any version of mobile device.