DENVER – More than 830,000 Colorado voters have turned in their ballots in the primary election as of Tuesday morning.
Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams says he expects a total of 900,000 or even 1 million ballots to be cast when the election ends at 7 p.m.
So far, Williams’ office says 324,206 ballots have been cast by Democrats, 311,329 by Republicans and 198,130 by unaffiliated voters.
The state has 3.8 million people eligible to vote.
A voter-passed initiative in 2016 allows Colorado’s 1.2 million active independent voters, the state’s largest voting bloc, to cast ballots in either the Democratic or Republican races but not both.
The race to succeed Colorado’s term-limited governor, Democrat John Hickenlooper, tops the state’s mid-term primaries.
Democrats, including U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, generally offer stands on schools, health care and energy to the left of the centrist Hickenlooper. Republicans, including Treasurer Walker Stapleton, hope to take a governor’s office they haven’t held since 2007.
Republicans and Democrats offered starkly different post-Hickenlooper visions for Colorado’s role – or resistance – in implementing Trump administration policies on immigration, the environment, taxes and health care.
