Colorado Springs resident Jeremiah Barro was surprised and upset to learn his mail-ballot request sent to the El Paso County Clerk and Recorder’s Office Oct. 11 was disseminated to about a dozen media organizations.

“It makes me angry,” he said Wednesday in a telephone interview from Afghanistan, where he’s working as a civilian contractor. “My date of birth, driver’s license and Social Security number, everything anybody would want to steal my identity, were on there.”

Barro is one of three voters whose requests were received by fax and then accidentally sent to a list of media fax numbers, the clerk’s office has said.

But Barro said he didn’t fax his ballot request, he e-mailed it after scanning it into his computer, a claim the clerk’s office disputes.

Barro said the Colorado Springs Business Journal and Colorado Springs Independent, which received the fax, told him about the mistake, not the clerk’s office.

Barro, who said he wants to vote for Sen. Barack Obama, at first thought the snafu might be connected to his being a Democrat. But because the problem was so isolated, he’s dismissed that idea.

“It’s kind of a fluke,” he said. “I don’t think this kind of incident says anything about the proficiency of the Clerk and Recorder’s Office. I think it’s just a very strange thing.

“The first thing that popped into my head was, how in the world could this happen?” he said.

That’s what Clerk and Recorder Bob Balink’s staff is trying to figure out.

Election official Terry Sholdt said the matter remains under investigation by county information technology personnel and the manufacturer. “We’ve impounded the machine,” she said.

Election officials previously said the fax machine that received the three ballot requests – Barro’s on Oct. 11 and two from local voters on Oct. 14 – sent them on to media fax numbers programmed into the machine.

Within 10 minutes of finding out about the problem on Oct. 14, the machine was shut down, Balink said.

“We are still trying to determine how it could have happened,” Balink said in an e-mail Thursday. “We have asked the District Attorney’s Office to investigate and, therefore, we will not comment further at this time.”

Barro thinks he deserves an apology but as of Wednesday had only heard from a staffer via e-mail, who wrote, “Good morning, Jeremiah. Your ballot was sent out on the 15th.

Have you received it yet? If not, please let me know.”

He said he hadn’t received it the last time he checked over the weekend.

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Contact the writer: 636-0238 or pam.zubeck@gazettedev.gazette.com

Brooke Moss,5, was the Grand Prize winner of the Gazette costume contest with her haunted house costume,complete with mailbox. Photo by THE GAZETTE