Eagle County primary ballots must be dropped off Tuesday
Republicans face more choices on primary ballot than Democrats
Chris Dillmann/Vail Daily archive
If you want to vote in this year’s primary election and haven’t yet cast your ballot, you’d better get to it.
It’s too late to drop a ballot in the mail — ballots must be received by the Eagle County Clerk & Recorder’s Office by 7 p.m. Tuesday. There are a number of drop boxes throughout the county. If ballots are in those boxes by 7 p.m. Tuesday, they’ll be counted, with one exception.
Eagle County has a number of locations to drop your primary ballots — it’s far too late to put a ballot in the mail. Here are the Vail Valley locations.
Vail: There’s a ballot drop box at Town Hall. The Grand View Room atop the Lionshead Parking Structure is available for in-person services.
Avon: The Eagle County Clerk and Recorder’s annex is in the Lodge at Avon Center, near Bob’s Place.
Edwards: There’s a ballot drop box at the Mountain Recreation building.
Eagle: There’s a drop box at the Eagle County Administration Building, 500 Broadway.
Gypsum: There’s a drop box at Gypsum Town Hall.
Voters registered as either Republicans or Democrats received ballots only for those parties. Unaffiliated voters received ballots for both parties, unless they indicated a preference of only receiving one ballot. Independent voters can return only one of those ballots. If a voter returns both ballots, neither will be counted.
Turnout for the primary election has been light so far.
Eagle County Clerk and Recorder Regina O’Brien said as of June 25, only about 16% of ballots had been returned. On the other hand, she added, as many as 40% of all ballots are only returned on Election Day.
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Eagle County Democrats have only one decision to make, picking a candidate to run for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District. The contenders are Soledad Sandoval Tafoya, Alex Walker and Adam Frisch. Only a sliver of Eagle County remains in that district, which tends to elect Republicans to the seat.
The seat is currently held by Republican Lauren Boebert of Garfield County. Boebert faces her own primary opponent in Don Coram of Montrose County.
In addition to the Boebert-Coram race, local Republicans have several other choices to make.
At the federal level, candidates Ron Hanks and Joe O’Dea are seeking to challenge incumbent Democrat Michael Bennet for one of Colorado’s U.S. Senate seats.
In the governor’s race, Greg Lopez and Heidi Ganahl are seeking the opportunity to challenge incumbent Democrat Jared Polis.
Tina Peters, Mike O’Donnell, and Pam Anderson are seeking to face the incumbent secretary of state, Democrat Jena Griswold.
It’s likely the votes will mostly be counted Tuesday evening. Results will be available on the Eagle County website, as well as the clerk’s Twitter account, @ECClerk, and the clerk’s Facebook page.
But results won’t be final until July.
O’Brien said ballots will continue to be scanned up to nine days after the election. Military ballots can take some time to trickle in. Those ballots are the only ones that can have Election Day postmarks.
There’s then a canvass procedure. Once the votes are officially counted and certified, extra-tight races — within a 0.5% difference — can then be subject to a recount.
O’Brien said her office takes the same approach to every election. That’s going to give some good experience to several new election judges who have started this year.
“This (primary election) will be a good opportunity” for those judges to gain some experience, O’Brien said. “Hopefully they’ll come back for the general election in November.”