All Larimer County Offices, Courts, District Attorney, and Ranch offices are closed on July 3, 2026 to celebrate the Independence Day holiday.
The Larimer County Landfill will be open July 3rd and closed on July 4th.
LCSO Administrative Offices will be closed on July 1 from 10am - 5 pm.
What happens to your ballot after you return it? Take a closer look behind the scenes with a virtual tour of our Counting Facility! If you're interested in an in-person tour, call our Office at (970) 498-7820 or send us an email at [email protected].
First, our ballot security teams travel all across Larimer County in bipartisan teams, collecting ballots from ballot boxes, vote centers, and the Post Office.
Once the ballots are received, they’re placed under seal and entered into a chain-of-custody log, which provides a comprehensive record of when election materials have been accessed or moved. In this way, we’re able to ensure that no ballots have been tampered with as they move between locations, and the security and integrity of the Election are preserved.
Back at the Counting Facility, our Ballot Security Teams unload the bags and check them in.
Once the seals are verified and the chain-of-custody log has been completed, our Election Judges go through the ballots, removing any personal mail or non-election materials, and setting aside any ballots with tears, stains, or other damage that would create jams in our machinery.
After a brief weight to estimate the number of ballots we receive, we run them through our Agilis ballot sorting system.
As each ballot passes through the machine, we capture an image of the ballot envelope, which contains a unique barcode and the voter’s signature.Since all ballots are anonymous, we use the barcode to determine who’s returned their ballot.Then, we use the signature to verify the voter’s identity.
While the physical ballots are set off to the side, an image of the voter’s signature is compared to the most recent signature in their voter record. If an Election Judge determines that the signatures don’t match, the signature is escalated to a second round of review, where a bipartisan team compares it to the voter’s entire record.
If the signatures still don’t match, the ballot is rejected and placed unopened into secure storage. Then, we send the voter a letter asking them to ‘cure’ their signature. If a voter doesn’t respond, or affirms that they didn’t vote in the Election, we refer it to the District Attorney’s office for further investigation.
Once a ballot has been accepted, it gets a quick pass through our Omation envelopener.
Then, Election Judges work in bipartisan teams to remove the ballots from their envelopes. At this point, there’s no way to connect a ballot back to its voter—a key step in protecting every voter’s right to privacy and anonymity.
After the ballots have been flattened and inspected for damage, they’re run through our high speed scanners, which read the ballots using the timing marks around the edge.
To ensure our voting system is reading the marks correctly, we conduct a logic and accuracy test before every election, where we run a test deck of ballots through the scanners. Because the results are known in advance, we’re able to confirm that the votes are being counted accurately (with never anything less than 100%).
If a ballot is torn, stained, damaged, or can’t be run through the scanner for any other reason, a bipartisan team of Election Judges will carefully copy the original ballot onto a new one.
If more than one oval is filled in for a race, an oval is filled in incompletely, there are write-in candidates, or any other marks the system can’t read, a bipartisan team of Election Judges will carefully review the ballot in order to determine the voter’s intent.
Once the ballots have been scanned, they’re placed into secure storage for the duration of the Election.
As we’re finalizing the results, we conduct what’s known as a Risk-Limiting Audit, where we examine a random sampling of ballots to confirm the results are correct.
Once the official results are in, the ballots are moved to our Warehouse for long-term storage, where they’ll be retained for at least 25 months.
