With control of the Colorado House of Representatives hanging in the balance, Democratic Mike McLachlan is still fighting to win House District 59.
According to the Colorado secretary of state’s unofficial election results, with 34,115 votes total, McLachlan is trailing Brown by only 229 votes.
A 171-vote difference is needed to trigger an automatic recount at the current vote total.
The five county clerks who oversee election results in the 59th have until Nov. 24 to certify results.
In the meantime, two categories of votes could be game changers.
The first is ballots coming in from overseas or the military, which count so long as they come in up to eight days after Election Day.
The second category is provisional ballots: These are ballots cast on or before Election Day with irregularities, such as an improper signature. If they’re “cured” in the next few days – they count.
At this juncture, McLachlan is clearly the underdog: In a race this tight, it’s going to be hard to find a few dozen extra votes anywhere.
But a McLachlan victory is not impossible. Perhaps the likeliest source of new McLachlan votes is going to be “uncured” ballots in La Plata County, where McLachlan defeated Brown by 1,200 votes, and Ouray County, where McLachlan defeated Brown by 99 votes.
Tiffany Lee Parker, La Plata County Clerk & Recorder, said on Thursday that 283 La Plata County ballots need curing.
Michelle Nauer, Ouray’s County Clerk & Recorder, said she has about 57 ballots that weren’t counted on Election Day. Of those 57 ballots, 23 came from overseas, and about 34 have signature discrepancies.
In a phone interview Thursday, McLachlan said he’d been in constant contact with the Colorado Democratic Party since Tuesday, and the party is doing everything in its power to get all the votes that might be counted in the 59th District counted.
But the 14-day window for curing provisional ballots after Election Day is brief. Even now, the clock is running out. Yet on Thursday, Nauer said neither the Democratic Party nor the Republican Party had requested a list of Ouray’s provisional ballots – curious, since its traditional for political party operatives to hassle people into curing their provisional ballots.
“My information is that all the votes have not been counted, and I’m talking about votes that were properly filed. There are also some uncured ballots, and we are going to follow up on all opportunities to calculate and get those ballots straightened out,” McLachlan said.
“The bottom line: We are not done yet with the electoral process, and we intend to pursue every available remedy to make sure the vote is a correct one. And we will be prepared to live with the result when that process is completed,” he said.
cmcallister@durangoherald.com
