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“We knew it would be tight”: Colorado wolf reintroduction riding on razor-thin vote margin

The tightest statewide race of the 2020 election in Colorado was about wolves. 

As counties meticulously counted dense ballots on Wednesday, Proposition 114 remained close, hovering, at points, within hundreds of votes of an automatic recount. 

The measure that would task Colorado Parks and Wildlife with creating a gray wolf reintroduction plan by the end of 2023 was slightly ahead the day after the election. A gap of 7,600 votes early Wednesday grew to more than 10,000 votes by midday but then fell to 8,800 votes by afternoon. By late Wednesday, the gap reached almost 13,000 as more Front Range county votes were tallied.



Opponents of the measure, which include the Colorado Farm Bureau, Colorado Cattlemen’s Association and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, were closely watching the numbers, waiting for the gap to get small enough to trigger a recount. 

Colorado law says a recount comes when the gap between the high vote and the low vote is equal to or less than 0.5% of the highest vote tally. Early Wednesday, as votes trickled in county-by-county, the recount target was as close as 700 votes and as far as 3,700 votes. 

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Read more from Jason Blevins, The Colorado Sun.


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