By BRIAN PORTER and JEN SCHUMANN | Rocky Mountain Voice
When the polls close and enough ballots are counted on Election Night, voters are familiar with news agencies “calling” a winner in a race.
“The call” is generally an estimation based on many factors, such as the percentage of votes counted against the anticipated total ballots cast, whether the margin is moving with each data release, if outstanding votes in a certain area might be a significant anomaly from the returned votes, and possibly a mathematical formula of what it may take to flip the race with the remaining outstanding votes. In other words, would a candidate with 35% of ballots remaining and only 20% of the vote need 90% of remaining ballots to favor him, a statistical improbability?
Once all of those considerations and more are satisfied, a “call” is made on the race, but it is important, some county clerks say, for voters to recognize the difference between the call of a race and the days before all ballots are counted.
“With the high percentage of voters that came out the last two days of the election, it’s going to take us a little time to balance that,” said Mesa County Clerk Bobbie Gross. ” Also, we have priorities that we have to put ahead of tabulating the ballots, because we have all the cure letters that we have to send out to the voters by the end of the day today [Thursday].”
In Mesa County, the Associated Press is reporting about 15% of ballots, representing votes in a specific race, have not yet been reported.
The Rocky Mountain Voice discussed with select county clerks in Eastern and Western Colorado how reporting of votes comes into play in the days following elections.
In Morgan County, the Associated Press was reporting about 96% of ballots counted as of 1 p.m. Thursday, meaning about 4% were uncounted.
The ballots included in the 4% are for a variety of reasons, Morgan County Clerk Kevin Strauch said: “I would expect we are discussing outstanding cures, where signatures may be under review, or maybe overseas or military ballots.”
He explains 4% is about 420 ballots in Morgan County, leading him to theorize about 200 are in curing phase and another 200 “or so” might be military, overseas or being re-routed from another county.
Gross further explains the reason no county presently might be at 100% of ballots being counted.
“We have to hold a certain number of ballots back,” she said, so the cured, absentee and overseas military ballots “have voter anonymity. We have to hold them back so nobody can be like, ‘Oh, those cured on this day, this must be how they voted.'”
Across the 4th District, which includes Morgan County and Eastern Colorado, about 7.3% of votes had not been reported as of 1 p.m. Thursday, although a winner in the U.S. House race had been settled. Meanwhile, a glance at some counties ranging across the state shows Las Animas County with only 2% of votes not having been counted, matching Montrose County. In Fremont County, the unreported votes are 3%, the Associated Press reports, while in Yuma County the outstanding votes are around 15%. And so it goes from county to county.
While the uncounted ballots may not be such an important consideration in but about 1% of races, it is in the 8th District, which featured Republican challenger Gabe Evans against Democrat Yadira Caraveo for the U.S. House seat in an area including Adams, Larimer and Weld Counties. The Associated Press was reporting 16.11% of votes unreported as of 1 p.m. Thursday. The race, right now split by about 2,100 votes, is one of the few remaining as undecided in Colorado. In that district, traditionally a ballot in Weld County would have a statistically better chance of helping Evans, who presently faces the deficit, close the margin on Caraveo. A ballot in Adams County is statistically better for Caraveo. And, even in eastern Adams County, a ballot is more favorable to Evans than in western Adams County.
Back in Morgan County, it neighbors a top-10 ballot-count county in Weld, with smaller Washington and Logan Counties to the east. Strauch explains there have been quite a few Morgan County ballots arrive from Weld County.
How a ballot from a Morgan County resident ends up in Weld County, Strauch explains, might be as simple as utilization of a Weld County dropbox through convenience by a Morgan County resident. Many residents of the area do work in Weld County, and even more used to when Weld’s oil and gas industry was vibrant.
“That could slow their ballot arriving to us,” he said.
It is also an issue in Mesa County, Gross explains.
“Anybody that dropped off their ballot that lives in a different county, we have to get their ballots over to them, too,” she said. “So these are our priorities: getting the cure letters out, getting those ballots that were dropped off here that belong to other counties over to those other counties.”
The public might see the unreported vote, but behind the scenes a lot of work is taking place.
“We had probably over 2,000 letters we had to send out in the last two days,” Gross said, of ballots needing to be cured.
About five hours away in Morgan County, Strauch says similar work is taking place in a smaller office with smaller staff. His county has a population about one-third of Mesa’s.
“I’m not bored today,” Strauch said when he answered the phone.
And neither is anyone in Gross’ office in Mesa County.
“We have about 8,000 in-person ballots to tabulate,” Gross said of Mesa County. “And the reason for that is we have to make sure that we balance. So with our vote centers, they’re bringing those ballots back. We have to make sure that we match the in-person to the in-person ballots and the mail ballots to the mail ballots that were all issued at each of the nine locations. We always want to balance before we tabulate just to make sure.”