Secretary of State Mike Coffman on Monday put four Colorado counties with problem- plagued elections on a "watch list" and ordered three of them to use paper ballot backups to their computerized voting machines next time.

Under the order, Denver, Douglas and Montrose counties must offer two voting systems because of problems they had that prevented citizens from casting ballots.

Pueblo, which failed to verify signatures on absentee ballots, was ordered to find a new way of storing signatures electronically.

Coffman said he came close to exercising his authority under state law to seek a court order to simply take over the administration of elections in Montrose and Pueblo counties, where officials actually violated state law.

But he chose to order extra supervision instead, noting he did not find any evidence of fraud.

But if any of the four counties don't clean up their act by the next statewide election, he'll trigger the court-ordered takeover, he said.

The next statewide election is likely to be in August 2008, but could occur this November if there is a ballot issue, Coffman said. He does not have authority over local elections, such as Denver's mayoral and City Council vote in May.

Coffman said officials in all four locations are cooperating. In each, the election officials are new since November, "so they're not defensive about it," he said.

In Pueblo, Montrose and Douglas counties, the clerks left office after the November elections because their terms expired.

In Denver, the appointed clerk resigned, and in January, voters approved a change in the city charter to create an elected county clerk.

Stephanie O'Malley was appointed interim Denver clerk and is running for the job in May. She noted that Denver already was on an election watch list by its own voters - tens of thousands of whom waited in hours-long lines to vote or gave up for lack of time.

But she said that "in the spirit of regaining voters' confidence," she expects to cooperate with the secretary of state. She suggested, however, that if Coffman intends to mandate expensive changes such as paper ballot backups to voting machines, she'd like to know how he intends to help pay for it.

Jack Arrowsmith, the new clerk in Douglas County, which had the latest vote cast in the nation at 1:30 a.m., said a county elections task force is coming to the same conclusion as Coffman: Paper ballots must be available for use during surges, when large numbers of voters arrive to cast their votes at the same time.

Both he and O'Malley said they don't know if they will need to print enough paper ballots for every voter.

Coffman said counties on the watch list will get training, mentoring and monitoring.

A bad November

Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman singled out four counties because of problems with November's vote.

• Denver: An electronic poll book failed, forcing voters to wait up to three hours and leading an estimated 18,000 voters to give up on casting their ballots. Absentee ballots had to be hand-sorted, delaying the count by nine days. Coffman found no violations, just mismanagement.

• Douglas: Voters waited up to six hours to cast ballots. Coffman found mismanagement but said the county was "substantially" compliant with state law.

• Montrose: Voting machines broke down, and voters had to wait in long lines. Coffman found numerous violations of state law, including a failure to have adequate security or an approved security plan, failure to test voting machines for accurate counting before the election and failure to reset them after the last election. Coffman also found the election supervisor "incredibly disorganized."

• Pueblo: The staff failed to check the validity of signatures on absentee ballots, a violation of state law, delaying the vote count almost a week.

imsea@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5438