Weld County election officials saw the potential deluge coming — and they headed much of it off with roving carriers — but still the volume of mail ballots turned in on Election Day slowed the counting process.Weld County Clerk and Recorder Steve Moreno said the county's 34 election centers were bombarded with 9,951 mail-in ballots dropped off on Tuesday.
“I figured that if we got 8,000 or more, we wouldn't be able to get them all counted last night,” Moreno said Wednesday. At the Weld County Elections Office in Greeley on Tuesday night, “we had ballots still being hand-delivered to us by election judges as late as 10:30.”
The surge forced election crews to work until 1 a.m. Wednesday and finish counting the final 3,300 mail ballots later Wednesday morning. Those tallies left the closest race in the county, the House District 50 contest between incumbent Democrat Jim Riesberg and Republican challenger Bob Boswell, at 7,666 votes for Riesberg and 7,400 for Boswell with 1,700 provisional ballots and 300 unqualified ballots yet to be counted.
Moreno said he sent the election crew home to get some rest after they worked past midnight on Election Day.
“We wanted to make sure we didn't have any errors in the process,” he said. “I think this is the best decision we could have made for the county and the voters in the county.” - More –
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