Politics

To thwart disinformation, Arapahoe County, Colorado adopts new domain for election’s website

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In order to continue fighting against supposed election misinformation, Arapahoe County, Colorado recently altered the domain name of its elections website to give it a more official title as a “government-operated, trustworthy” source of information for voters.

The URL, which was formerly www.arapahoevotes.com is now www.arapahoevotes.gov.

“Unlike .com domains, .gov domains can only be used by websites that have been thoroughly vetted to ensure they are the property of an official government office,” said the Arapahoe County Elections Division in a press release.

The third most populated county in Colorado says that its elections site noted over 128,000 visitors in the month prior to the 2020 election and an additional 27,000 in the month before last year’s off-year election. 

The site gives voters information on how to register and where to cast their ballots, and it also provides sample ballots, as well as voter turnout data and election results would also be posted there following elections.

“The website also publishes in-depth information on elections transparency, including explainers on mail ballot voting, equipment testing and post-election audits,” the county noted. 

Some security organizations for national elections, like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, have been consistently encouraging local governments to change their election website URLs to .gov domains. They argue that this tactic could counter the efforts of “bad actors” looking to plant disinformation and would instead promote distrust of elections.

So far, Arapahoe County seems to be the first urban area county to actually implement the change, as other counties in and near Denver are still using .com, .org, and .us for suffixes on their elections websites.

ARTICLE: ELIZABETH HERTZBERG

MANAGING EDITOR: CARSON CHOATE

PHOTO CREDITS: DENVER POST

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