With all eyes on Pueblo County, clerk Ortiz calls for patience for Frisch, Boebert results

Just as Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Republican from Silt, has attracted national headlines throughout her first term in office, what could be a massive upset is also raising eyebrows around the country.

Boebert's Democratic challenger, Adam Frisch of Aspen, is maintaining a razor-thin lead over Boebert Wednesday, but the biggest county in the district still has approximately 5,000-6,000 votes to count and report.

Of the still-unreported votes, about 2,300 are from in-person voters in Pueblo. Approximately 1,000 Republicans, 1,000 unaffiliated voters and 500 Democrats cast ballots on in-person machines according to numbers reported by the Secretary of State's office.

Pueblo County Clerk and Recorder Gilbert “Bo” Ortiz told the Chieftain that his office is “planning” on releasing new results before the end of the day but people should be patient: the numbers might not be ready until Thursday.

A batch of 4,000 votes was uploaded Wednesday afternoon that narrowed Frisch's lead in the district and majority in Pueblo County.

“We're working diligently and we want to get those results as fast as we can, but we won't sacrifice accuracy for speed,” Ortiz said.

Election 2022: Frisch maintains slight lead over Boebert as vote count continues in Pueblo

Pueblo County has tabulated and reported 50,322 ballots so far per the latest data uploaded to the statewide database at 11:52 p.m. Tuesday night. According to ballot returns through midnight on election night released by the Secretary of State’s office, Pueblo has received 61,534 ballots, which includes 2,651 people who voted in person.

The initial vote count for this year is about 6,000 votes short of the 67,548 ballots cast in the 2018 midterm elections.

Frisch is currently leading in Pueblo County by over 5,000 votes, higher than the razor-thin margin of 2,500 he’s currently holding over Boebert.

Mesa County, the second-largest by population in CD3, reported a new batch of data at 4:30 a.m. last night that appears to include the vast majority of votes. Boebert is still leading in Mesa, but by slightly slimmer margins than in 2020.

In 2020, Boebert narrowly lost Pueblo County to Democrat Diane Mitsch Bush by 204 votes.

Ortiz couldn’t say why results in Pueblo are taking relatively longer to report than some other counties in CD3 since they’re following the same rules as the other counties in Colorado; there are many factors that contribute to the speed of reporting election results.

He said that the delay is not related to staffing issues, as the clerk's office has enough election judges on staff at the moment.

As election workers continue to tabulate and report results, Ortiz said that Pueblo County could be getting lots of attention from around the state and country in the next few days.

“I think we're going to be headline news, maybe nationwide, in the next couple of days,” Ortiz said.

Adam Frisch: 5 things to know about the Democrat looking to upset Lauren Boebert

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat who was easily reelected for a second term Tuesday night, sent an election supervisor to oversee the general election in Pueblo County after all of the ballots sent to voters had a minor error and thousands of voters received incorrect ballots during the June primary.

Ortiz said that the election supervisor, Eagle County Treasurer Teak Simonton, left Pueblo Wednesday morning, but Griswold could ask her to come back to Pueblo at any point in the future.

“Everything went the way it was supposed to go,” Ortiz said.

'The citizens of Pueblo have spoken': Clerk Gilbert 'Bo' Ortiz reflects on primary defeat

The increased attention and scrutiny on Colorado could be an opportunity for the state to show off its all-mail ballot system, which has been in place since 2014. Some say that Colorado’s system is the “gold standard” for election integrity, with multiple audits and bipartisan verification built into the election procedure followed by county clerks.

Increased scrutiny could help Ortiz end his 16-year tenure as county clerk on a decent note, he added. He was resoundingly ousted in the Democratic primary in June.

“I really feel like my credibility is shot right now, but I have an opportunity here to gain some credibility back,” Ortiz said.

Anna Lynn Winfrey covers politics for the Pueblo Chieftain. She can be reached at awinfrey@gannett.com or on Twitter, @annalynnfrey.

This article originally appeared on The Pueblo Chieftain: Frisch eyes upset of Boebert, but Pueblo County results could take time