Colorado's new, centralized voter registration database will get a test drive over the next two weeks as county clerks put it through a mock election.

The exercise, which kicked off Monday, will simulate all aspects of the voting process for clerks statewide, just short of counting ballots, said Secretary of State Mike Coffman. The idea is to put as much stress as possible on the new State of Colorado Registration and Election system, or SCORE, and to discover problems in time to fix them for the August primaries.

"That is the reason to actually conduct this mock election, so we can identify the bumps," said Trevor Timmons, SCORE's project director.

SCORE, which manages the state's massive voter-registration database, will be used to check in voters at the polls, confirm their eligibility and make sure they get the right ballot. Previously, counties kept separate databases, but the federal Help America Vote Act mandated a centralized system. The system is not used to count votes.

SCORE has seen its share of bumps in development. After problems with the firm initially hired to create it, the state switched to a new contractor, making SCORE two years late from the state's initial estimate.

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