Voter participation numbers have been high for the Moffat County Clerk and Recorder’s office, particularly in early voting.

The office issued a press release Monday morning, detailing that more than 3,800 ballots had already been cast by Moffat County residents at that point, including more than 3,400 mail-in ballots and 405 in-person votes.

Despite a printing error discovered with ballots last week, in which “timing marks” were accidentally cut off, Clerk and Recorder Stacy Morgan said that election judges have been hard at work authenticating the votes.

With more than 50 election judges working on the ballots cast by voters from throughout the county, the process involves triple-checking and auditing them.

Morgan said the step of replicating ballots involves duplicating ballots with the printing error onto scannable ones. She said that this is a normal part of the election protocol that had to be “scaled up” slightly by a team of bipartisan workers to counter the error.

Voter’s choices from their original, returned ballot onto a new, blank ballot with proper timing marks to ensure it can be properly scanned and counted. Ballot duplication is addressed in Colorado Election Rule 18.4 and is open to observation by election watchers appointed by political parties and candidates.

While this put an extra step in the work, it was not one that upended the proceedings, Morgan said, noting that she was grateful to the Republican, Democrat and unaffiliated workers who volunteered to participate.

Pam Anderson, a state observer offering election support through the Colorado Clerks Association, noted that while there have been some setbacks, the counting process has been streamlined from previous years.

“People forget that we used to have hundreds of thousands of provisional ballots we could not release until 14 days after the election, so we’ve actually gotten faster,” she said. “Accurate is more important than fast. I’m so impressed with the diligence and the dedication of these teams.”

Election officials said on Monday afternoon they were expecting an influx of voters late Tuesday.

Ballots can be dropped off or cast in person through 7 p.m. Tuesday at Moffat County Courthouse, 1198 W. Victory Way.

Visit CraigDailyPress.com for updates on initial results.