U.S. Senate
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(D) J. Hickenlooper*
(R) Somebody
80%
20%
Governor
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(D) Phil Weiser
(D) Joe Neguse
(D) Jena Griswold
60%
60%
40%↓
Att. General
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(D) M. Dougherty
(D) Alexis King
(D) Brian Mason
40%
40%
30%
Sec. of State
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(D) A. Gonzalez
(D) George Stern
(R) Sheri Davis
50%↑
40%
30%
State Treasurer
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(D) Brianna Titone
(R) Kevin Grantham
(D) Jerry DiTullio
60%
30%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(R) Jeff Hurd*
(D) Somebody
80%
40%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert*
(D) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank*
(D) Somebody
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(R) Gabe Evans*
(D) Yadira Caraveo
(D) Joe Salazar
50%
40%
40%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
October 17, 2008 05:41 AM UTC
37 Comments
Especially Arap. and Jeffco. I thought we were all required to have paper trails by now.
I have to say though I am pretty confident in Denver’s preparedness. We finished entering voter registration forms ahead of time and are quickly catching up on a back log of mail ballot requests.
As for election day and early voting: we are using paper ballots for everything so we should not have issues there.
For early voting we are using electronic poll books at our 13 sites but have a paper poll book back in place just in case.
This will be a switch, if Boulder & Denver run things well and it’s some other counties that are the mess this time.
At least as far as everybody being able to cast their vote. Two years ago it was a disaster. A single mom who takes off at 4 to vote and has to leave a long line at 6 to get her kid out of day care was simply disenfranchised in 2006. This year, the votes should be cast smoothly. It may take a helluva long time to count them, but so what?
The right to vote is precious. A speedy county is mostly something the media demands.
The local network affiliates did everything short of telling people to stay home. I heard “chaos” mentioned more than a few times.
Of course, the local news is a joke, but still.
of getting Denver up to speed. With our bedsheet ballots, it will take a long time to count. But I think we’re in good shape as far as getting them cast. I’m voting Tuesday, first day of early voting should be heavy. STay tuned. Of course , that means I have just four days to decide whether to vote for Schaffer, Udall or do the right thing and just skip it.
you can take as many voting stations as you want to mark them. Thus, the only possible bottleneck is in identifying voters in the first place — that’s where the catastrophe hit last time. If we keep that line moving, then it doesn’t matter how long individual voters take to mark their ballot. Likewise, it may be a long count but if it’s an accurate one and everybody had a chance to cast their vote (with the possible exception of Tony Romo) then I think everybody will be satisfied.
…is not voting on the Senate race. Be a man Bob – make a decision. Of course if that decision is Schaffer, then yes, do consider not voting 🙂
to the senate and just leaving an empty seat? Does the communist Party have a Senate candidate?
Granted, you want other states to provide them. But in a body of 100 people you can’t have 100 leaders. Udall will get some useful stuff done on the environment and he’ll be a somewhat consistent vote for the Dems.
And unlike Schaffer, he does meet the maxim of “first, do no harm.”
ducking out on the bailout vote, which he was sure would pass so he did the politically expedient thing by opposing it.
When it failed, he refused to do the right thing because he dreaded being called a “flip flopper”
I can’t afford Mark Udall.
Schaffer may have the wrong principles, but at least he has principles.
Just saying…
(notice how I cleverly avoided Godwin’s law)
Did it fail by one vote or does Udall have 23 votes?
I never figured you to be an advocate of governing by Dow.
other investors will have to target their own weasels.
it’s factually incorrect that Udall “cost [you] $17K in one day on [your] 401k just by ducking out on the bailout vote.”
No matter which way he voted, it was doomed.
one of them being udall, cost me 17k. I don’t reward weaseldom and the longer you try to defend it, the more it makes me lean to schaffer.
Be patient.
But, seriously, this copout epitomizes Udall to me. Whether you thought the bailout was necessary of not, I’m pretty sure Udall understood the necessity. He also figured he could play both ends against the middle, voting the politically popular no side while it passed. I don’t make too many “profiles in courage” tests, but this was one and Udall failed. Otherswho played the same cynical game switched when the Senate gave them a few convenient fig leafs but Udall was so determined not to be called a “flip-flopper” than he again cast a wholly irresponsible vote. In about 3 hours I intend to vote and just can’t bring myself to vote for a man who so cynically voted to endanger my retirement and my family’s welfare. I’ll either vote for Schaffer or pass. Udall will win, obviously, but somebody has to let him know there is a price to be paid for such cynicism. I had to edit his apologia, by the way, and damn near puked.
sadly, there’s no intelligent third party guy to protest vote for either.
there’s always another side to the coin and in this case its the vicious “just kidding” ad the hard right is now smearing him with. Udall is a wimp to the core of his being but he’s not satan personified. I’m almost tempted to vote for him to protest the smear.
Bob Schaffer would have voted “Yes”? No way.
Still, I’m curious to hear how it ended up on your ballot.
I usually just plug my nose and vote for the person who offends me the least. This year, I’m not so much voting for Udall (though I have a much higher opinion of him than you and David) as voting against Bob Schaffer as a proxy vote against Dick Wadhams.
and I actually believe him. His catch was that he hadn’t actually had a chance to read the bailout, which honestly few of the House guys did before voting on it. Congress, such a deal.
What tipped me in the end was Schaffer’s insane comment in their last debate that the federal government had no responsibility for student loans.
Udall is a wimp who irresponsibly put my family’s future at risk. But the biggest threat to our future is that my kids, between them, owe $250,000 in student loans )graduate degrees, private schools, what can you do.) Living in BruceWorld, where we’ve gutted higher education on the altar of right wing ideology, I simply cannot forgive attacks on one of the few legitimate functions of the federal government, support for higher education.
Father forgive me, I voted for Udall.
Okay, I voted against the right wing terrorists who are trying to destroy the America I believe in. Anything that makes Grover Norquist feel bad must have some redeeming virtue.
But really, if education isn’t a function of government, what other function, other than national defense, can it really claim?
And I know what you’re talking about with regards to student loan debt. I have a fair amount myself.
owing $300 in student loans. Multiply by 10 to correct for inflation and its still no big deal. Today, we try to crush our kids. My son has a MA in philosophy from Boston college and is now on a full ride scholarship for his ph.d in philosophy there. My daughter has a law degree from DU. I want to help them wsith that burden, which is why the 401k is so important to me. But honestly, to put that much burden on our kids is proof that America has lost its bearings.
I have part of my tuition paid by my grandmother (thank god for her) but I still have to take out all of these loans to pay for all the other costs of college.
I’m going to CU too, not BC or DU. I can’t even imagine what those bills looked like.
is about $30 k a year, plus you have to live.
My daughter also had a young daughter so she borrowed pretty heavily. We helped what we could but the debt still piled up. Now, when I’d like to help her pay them off, my wages are frozen and my 401k is in the toilet.
Not to worry, though, the important thing is to stop gay marriage! Do that, and the rest of the problems will solve themselves, or so I’m told.
And railing (correctly) about the fact that the government has to either borrow or print the money, potentially causing the Dollar to collapse.
I understand you’re pissed. I disagree with you about Udall’s reasoning on this bailout. I’ve talked to him at length about it, and I believe he voted his convictions that this bill does not benefit Americans in general, but just the small percentage who happen to be bank CEOs and major shareholders of banks. He’s also clear that he would have voted for a bailout package that had some thought put into it and actually took steps to fix the root causes of the crisis.
Nevertheless, you are entitled to your opinion, and I respect that.
Go to all mail in ballots all the time.
Voters wouldn’t have to worry about their votes being recorded. Voting machines would only be at the vote centers that are mandatory under HAVA. It is less expensive to run mail in ballots than to run precinct elections.
And on and on and on…
My personal opinion, election day will go fine in Colorado. Arapahoe and Jefferson counties will be fine (both have excellent county clerks). There will be a record number of people voting by mail this year in Colorado.
It would take a massive election day foul-up, ten times worse than ’04 and ’06 for there to be no precinct polling places.
Many in their 20s get together with friends and they all talk as they vote their mail ballots together. Apparently the standing in line and secret ballot are not treasured by our young.
I’m not old. I’m 24. And I think you might be exaggerating slightly in your opinion of all these twentysomethings having ballot fill-in get togethers.
But you’re right, the mail-in only is probably the future. But it gets back to what dwyer was saying the other day about stamps.
Plus, I can’t speak for everyone my age, but remembering to mail stuff out is not high on my list of every day skills.
I think we should do both. Limiting the venues with which we can participate in democracy is stupid. The more formats that are available, the more we should be able to use them.
My 20 year old – filled out the ballot and then when my wife was up there to see her, said “here mom, please mail this.” Classic.
I do the same thing, but thank God for my wife. She makes sure things get mailed out when they’re supposed to.
If it wasn’t for her, nothing would get mailed out.
if you want to.
Also, if the worst thing we need to worry about is getting younger voters to remember to put their ballot in the mailbox, well, that would be an improvement over the current system, wouldn’t it?
at the Auraria campus. To their credit, many people were already registered. Some of them were going to be receiving their mail-in ballots, and more power to them.
However, the majority of people I tried to get registered who were already registered (I won’t even begin to get into the frustration of kids telling me they didn’t want to register to vote) did not want mail-in ballots. It is not in their nature.
Mail-in ballots are already available, and people don’t want them. If you make it so they have to vote by mail, how is that making them more likely to vote?
Our #1 priority this year was getting people to register for mail-ins though, so maybe I’m just totally off-kilter on this whole topic.
Whatever increases overall Democratic participation, I’m for that.
There is nothing you can do with the mail-in ballot system that can make it as secure as in-person voting. You can mitigate the issues, but you can’t eliminate them.
With a mail-in ballot, you have to double-check that your ballot was received, you can be pressured to cast your votes in a certain way by people standing over you, and your ballot can be just as easily dropped behind the desk as can an in-person ballot (actually, a lot easier, and they know whose ballot security envelope they’re dropping behind the counter, too…).
If you want the absolute best in current elections methodology, vote early and in person using a paper ballot where possible. It is anonymous, private, and accountable.