Unofficial results for the presumed next Boulder County commissioner are split by only 42 votes.
The results of the June 28 primary won’t be updated until Thursday night, and either Democratic commissioner candidate could still win, with Ashley Stolzmann leading with 27,095 votes against Elaina Shively’s 27,053 votes.
The winner of the Democratic primary is the presumed county commissioner, as no Republican ran in the June primary. After the November election, the commissioner winner would take office in January and replace current Commissioner Matt Jones, who did not run for reelection.
Stolzmann is the current mayor of Louisville, while Shively works for the Boulder County District Attorney’s Office.
The most recent primary results were last updated at 9 p.m. June 29, according to Boulder County Clerk reporting. There have been 77,266 Boulder County ballots counted while 81,424 have been received, leaving 4,158 ballots with results yet to be reported.
According to the clerk’s office, the number of ballots received will always be higher than the total number counted. This is because there will be a number of voters who turned in their ballots but something went wrong with their ballot envelope — this could be a missing signature or signature discrepancy. Voters have until eight days after the election to resolve these issues, but some won’t.
Military and overseas voter ballots also have until the end of the eighth day after the election to arrive, though historically less than 5% of these ballots are received after Election Day, according to the clerk’s office.
Other Boulder County ballots turned in outside of the county or mailed in will need time to be delivered to the clerk, while a few ballots in every precinct are held to help preserve the anonymity of cured or oversea ballots. Another roughly 500 ballots typically require extra time to be processed due to things like food stains, damaged envelopes or poor markings, according to the clerk’s office.
Ballots in that eight day window will be processed on the ninth day after the election, which is Thursday, with unofficial results posted by the end of the day. Typically, results don’t change after that date, the clerk’s office said.
Voters can check the status of their ballot by signing up for BallotTrax. Wednesday was the last day to resolve any issues with a ballot envelope signature in order for the ballot to be counted.
