Election night has gone on for three days in Boulder County and may stretch into today if about 55,000 remaining ballots could not be tallied by midnight Thursday.
Boulder County Clerk and Recorder Hillary Hall said workers would continue the slow process of checking individual ballots to ensure accuracy.
Hall directed election workers last weekend to check for problems during the ballot-scanning process.
Specks of “paper dust” on some mail-in ballots were sticking to the lens of the scanner and putting a line through an empty box. That caused the scanner to record a phantom vote, Hall said, which election workers must review.
There were no such problems earlier this year for a mail-in ballot election in Longmont or during the primaries, Hall said.
Integrated Voting Solutions printed more than 4 million ballots for cities and counties throughout the country — including Boulder County — for Tuesday’s election and there have been no other reported problems, said the company’s election services manager, Frank Kaplan.
“It’s the same paper, the same personnel and the same facility we used in all the others,” Kaplan said. “I can’t tell you what the problem is.”
“That’s why this is so heartbreaking,” said Hall, who was elected in 2006 on a promise of streamlining the clerk and recorder’s office. In 2004, misprinted ballots and other setbacks delayed results for more than three days after polls closed.
“I know the community expects results, and for this to happen is really disappointing,” Hall said.
Her office reported that 110,999 of the 166,000 ballots had been processed by Thursday afternoon.
At least one tight race in the county still is undecided.
“You’d think two days after the election, something would be settled by now,” said Longmont police Detective Stephen Schulz. Schulz is president of the Longmont Fraternal Order of Police, which asked voters to allow police and firefighters to unionize.
By Thursday afternoon, the measure was barely ahead.
A tax hike for the Mountain View Fire Protection District and a tax increase and bond issue for the St. Vrain Valley School District also appeared to be passing Thursday.
“It would have been nice to know the results by Tuesday night,” said St. Vrain spokesman John Poynton. “But we are grateful the information we do have is accurate.”
In Adams County, a heavy backlog of votes finally produced at least a partial win for the Adams 12 Five Star School District on Thursday morning. Voters passed the district’s $9.9 million mill-levy override.
An $80 million bond issue failed.
“Because of the heavy turnout, election officials couldn’t get all the ballots counted Tuesday night,” said district spokeswoman Janelle Albertson. “We waited, and Thursday morning we got the good news.”
Monte Whaley: 720-929-0907 or mwhaley@denverpost.com
