Most of the 828 ballots that sat in a U.S. Postal Service warehouse until Election Day were meant for voters eligible to vote in the razor-thin Aurora mayor’s race, Colorado’s top election official said Friday.
The failure to deliver those ballots — replacements sent out well in advance of Tuesday for Arapahoe and Denver counties — fueled a spat between Secretary of State Jena Griswold and the U.S. Postal Service on Friday, when it was revealed publicly. Postal carriers were called back Tuesday afternoon to deliver the ballots before the polls closed, USPS said, but Griswold said the Postal Service should have notified her office.
Had that happened, Griswold said, she could have asked a judge to keep polls and drop boxes in those two counties open past the 7 p.m. closing time. But her office learned of the day-of-the-election deliveries on Friday morning when it received a third-party tip, she said.
“The post office has failed to adequately deliver their ballots,” she said, adding that the issue points to the need for a regulation or law requiring notification in such cases.
A spokesman for USPS, James Boxrud, called Griswold’s comments about the replacement ballots “inaccurate” and “disappointing” in a statement late Friday that downplayed the delivery delays. He said local letter carriers didn’t receive the replacement ballots until Election Day and then “ensured the replacement ballots were delivered before the polls closed through special runs.”
“All ballots — including replacement ballots — are printed and mailed by an out-of-state vendor,” Boxrud said. “Due to this process, it is not uncommon for the Postal Service to handle replacement ballots through the election period.”
“This was extremely uncommon — that’s why you are all here,” Griswold responded to members of the media during an afternoon news conference.
The majority of Aurora is in Arapahoe, and candidates for three races there — mayor and two City Council seats — are leading by fewer than 300 votes. In the mayor’s race, former U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman led Omar Montgomery, the local NAACP chapter president, by 281 votes in the latest unofficial results Friday.
Griswold told reporters that 664 of the replacement ballots in question were sent to Aurora voters. Of that group, 141 voters submitted ballots by the time polls closed — 96 by dropping them off, and 45 by voting in person, potentially before Tuesday. That’s 21% turnout for that group, versus 43% for Arapahoe County as a whole in the election.
Based on wider turnout in the Aurora race it doesn’t appear that the late-delivered ballots would have been enough to affect the outcome there, Griswold said.
Her office was still researching what happened with other affected voters in the two counties.
The replacement mail ballots were ordered from Denver’s and Arapahoe’s vendor more than a week before the election for voters who requested replacements, or who didn’t receive theirs in the initial mailing last month. The vendor printed those ballots in Seattle and mailed them Oct. 29, Griswold’s office said.
They landed in a Denver postal warehouse on Nov. 1, Griswold said. Part of that batch was delivered on a priority basis as intended, she said. But Caleb Thornton, an election attorney in the secretary of state’s office, said the Postal Service has told him that for the other part of that batch, a tag labeling the ballots as priority apparently fell off, resulting in the mail going undelivered until the issue was discovered Tuesday.
“Had that (tag) remained in place … I think they would have been delivered much sooner,” Thornton said.
Griswold, in placing the blame on the Postal Service, said the Denver and Arapahoe clerk’s offices properly initiated their replacement ballot orders before the state deadline.
But she addressed concerns raised Thursday about Arapahoe County Clerk and Recorder Joan Lopez after Lopez struggled to explain during an interview with 9News why the public should have faith in the vote-counting process. Republicans have questioned the Democratic official’s handling of the election.
The interview prompted Griswold to send observers Friday to watch Arapahoe’s continued processing of remaining ballots.
“We have no reason to believe there’s any irregularities,” Griswold said. “With that, I think the interview was troubling, and I’ve sent observers to Arapahoe because I know some folks are concerned about that statement.”