DENVER (AP) — Some Palisade residents have received the wrong ballots, and the Fremont County Clerk’s Office says some of their ballots do not have a tax measure for the Fremont County Fire Protection District.
A problem was discovered when a Palisade voter noticed that two ballot measures were not on his mail-in ballot, Mesa County Clerk Sheila Reiner said.
The measures ask Palisade voters if they want to allow the retail sale of recreational marijuana and to impose a special tax on those sales.
Reiner said her office so far has identified as many as 111 Palisade voters who may have the wrong ballot, and she has spoken with or left messages with each one to make sure they get the right one. A total of 1,441 ballots were sent to Palisade voters.
She hopes to get the issue resolved for all those voters before voting ends on Election Day, Nov. 4, Reiner said.
“We’ll either give them a new ballot or print new ballots that just include those two questions,” she said. “No one outside of Palisade was impacted by this printing error.”
The Palisade ballots are one of 61 different ballot “styles” that Reiner’s office mails out. Each style includes different races depending on where individual voters live.
The Fremont County ballot question asks voters if they want to raise taxes by $925,000 to maintain the current level of emergency services and avoid cutbacks.
The ballots for Precinct 16 did not have the Fremont County Fire Protection District’s Ballot Issue 5A on them. The County Clerk’s office is sending the voters of Precinct 16 a supplemental ballot with the missing proposal on it.
The ballots still must be returned to the clerk’s office on or before 7 p.m. Election Day.
The clerk’s office is asking voters to not return the supplemental ballot with the original ballot already sent, and asked them to use the supplemental envelope provided.
