CBS Colorado says Colorado Republicans still don’t know who their nominee for governor is almost a week after the primary, because apparently this state cannot even hand one battered political party a name tag without turning it into a hostage negotiation with spreadsheets.
Victor Marx, who runs a ministry in southern Colorado, is leading State Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer by 1,950 votes. State Rep. Scott Bottoms is way back in third. But thousands of ballots are still floating around in procedure purgatory, meaning the GOP’s big announcement is currently trapped somewhere between “pending” and “please hold for the next available democracy technician.”
To be clear, this is not fraud cosplay. Nobody needs to put on the tinfoil tri-corner hat and start yelling about ballot goblins hiding in a Pueblo broom closet.
The issue, according to the CBS Colorado report, is the normal machinery of Colorado elections: missing signatures, mismatched signatures, military and overseas ballots, damaged or unreadable ballots, privacy holds, cure deadlines, and recount math. In other words, a system designed to protect votes also happens to look, to the average exhausted voter, like a DMV printer jammed during a hostage crisis.
There are about 11,600 ballots statewide with signature discrepancies. Voters have until Wednesday at midnight to fix them. Counties have to contact them by mail, and if voters provided contact information, by phone, text, and email. Campaign volunteers may even show up at the door.
Because nothing says “confidence in elections” like being chased across three platforms and a front porch because your ballot envelope signature looked more like “after shoveling snow” than “fresh penmanship sample from 2018.”
The Colorado Clerk’s Association says past elections suggest only about 30% of those problem ballots will likely get fixed, especially since this primary landed right before a holiday weekend. That means the final answer may come Thursday, unless the margin falls into automatic recount territory, in which case everybody gets another week inside the paperwork tornado.
Again: lawful process. Real deadlines. Actual rules.
Also: holy hell, this is exactly why voters are losing their minds.
Institutions love to tell people to be patient. Be patient while we count. Be patient while we cure. Be patient while we verify, tabulate, audit, reconcile, certify, recount, explain, re-explain, and release a PDF that looks like it was formatted by a raccoon with a government laptop.
Fine. Count every legal vote. Fix every fixable signature. Follow the law. Nobody serious should want sloppy elections.
But competence matters. Confidence matters. And after years of Colorado’s political class burning public trust like free firewood, they do not get to act shocked when normal people see another too-close-to-call mess and mutter, “Here we go again.”
Meanwhile, Colorado Republicans are waiting to learn who gets the honor of taking on Democrat Phil Weiser in the general election, because Gov. Jared Polis is term-limited and the Democratic machine is already standing there with the building keys, the donor list, the parking lot, and probably the emergency exits labeled “equity.”
Marx and Kirkmeyer are not just waiting on ballots. They are waiting to see who inherits the privilege of trying to lead a Colorado GOP that often looks capable of finding a rake in an empty field and stepping on it with both feet.
If Republicans spend this waiting period turning on each other before the race is even called, they will once again prove they can lose twice before breakfast: once to the opponent, and once to their own dumb instincts.
Colorado voters deserve elections that feel solid, understandable, and timely — not a slow-motion DMV appointment with campaign signs.
Count the votes. Follow the law. Name the nominee. And for once, maybe try making democracy look less like a malfunctioning vending machine eating the state’s last dollar.
Source: CBS Colorado
Just Stop It
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