November 02, 2011 05:25 PM UTC

Weld County numbers

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• by: Tom

I went hunting election results this morning and it ended up being harder than usual. The Weld County Clerk’s website usually has a page with election results updated in real time. They don’t have a link posted any more, so I had plenty of time to scour through the site and get pissed off.

The posted voter statistics from September show 150k registered voters. The election results indicate 101k registered voters

Only 42k people voted in Weld County this year out of 150k (or 101k) registered voters. That’s really low for a mail-ballot election. There were 80k voters out of 110k registered in 2010.

When I went to drop off my ballot yesterday, I was in line behind a man who had come to pick up a ballot. He said “my wife got hers in the mail and I waited to see when mine would come.”

The choice of not sending ballots to inactive voters made a significant difference in turnout, though there’s no telling what it meant for the election.