Why the Pueblo city clerk, not county elections staff, will administer mayoral runoff race

Although it’s not guaranteed, Pueblo city clerk Marisa Stoller is expecting that there will be a runoff in the 2023 mayoral election.

Pueblo’s city charter requires that a runoff election is held if one candidate does not receive a majority of votes. More than a dozen candidates have filed their intent to run for the office, so it’s unlikely that a single candidate will be a decisive victor.

Stoller is already working on planning the runoff election, expected sometime in January next year.

The city will be getting some help from the Pueblo County elections department, under jurisdiction of Pueblo County Clerk Candace Rivera, but the county itself will not run the runoff election like it did in 2019.

That’s because county elections staff need to prepare for Colorado’s presidential primary election, scheduled for March 5, Rivera said in a statement.

Why the county can’t run the runoff

“Our statutory timelines and obligations to conduct the 2024 presidential primary for Pueblo County voters overlap and conflict with the election preparation and conduct of a potential city of Pueblo mayoral runoff election in January 2024,” Rivera wrote in an emailed statement.

Running an election takes months of work before and after ballots are due to ensure everyone’s vote is counted accurately. Elections staff will need to start preparing for the presidential primary “as early as” Jan. 5, 2024 and mail ballots to military and overseas voters on Jan. 20, Rivera said.

Stoller told the Chieftain that the runoff will likely be in late January, but the date has not yet been finalized. The timing of the runoff also needs to align with the statutory requirements for sending ballots to military and overseas voters, Stoller said. Colorado law requires that ballots get sent no later than 45 days before an election.

Rivera said she was unavailable for an interview and follow-up questions, but Deputy Clerk Karen Long explained that it’s difficult to have two elections running on election equipment at the same time.

Running two different elections at once isn’t impossible, but it’s not a good idea, Long said — “it can be done, but we've never done it before and it's really not advisable.”

Long also noted that the timeline for the municipal election stretches into December, which could affect how soon military and overseas ballots could be sent out in a runoff. Dec. 14 is the last day for election staff to complete a recount requested and paid for by an “interested party.”

Counties are required by Colorado law to run coordinated elections held in November, but are not legally obligated to run elections for cities, special districts and other political entities during other times of the year.

In addition to the presidential primary in March 2024, Pueblo County elections staff will also run the primary election in June 2024 and the general election in November 2024.

How the city is preparing to do the runoff

Administering the runoff will cost the city approximately $250,000, Stoller said.

The city would have been on the hook to pay for the runoff election even if Pueblo County administered it. Stoller said she wasn’t sure how much it would have cost to run the runoff election if the county was doing most of the work.

The cost of printing and mailing the ballots is one of the largest costs of running the election, Stoller said, and that likely wouldn’t change much under the county’s supervision.

There are some “very minor” setup costs with the printing vendor, as well as some “equipment rental and setup costs” that might be higher because the city is taking the lead, but other expenses such as paying election judges would be the same, Stoller said.

The city is also planning on hiring an election supervisor of day-to-day operations and election judges so that staff in Stoller’s office won’t be handling “day-to-day ballot operations.”

How this compares to what happened in Pueblo West

Rivera was sworn in as Pueblo County’s new clerk and recorder in January.

Earlier this year, before she had obtained certification to run elections, Rivera notified the Pueblo West Metro District that her office would not be able to administer the May 2 special district election.

An initial intergovernmental agreement with the city — which Pueblo city council unanimously approved Monday night — defines that the county will run the municipal election in November but not run the potential runoff. Also, Stoller and Long said that the city and county are working on an additional intergovernmental agreement to formalize how the county can assist the city with the runoff.

Rivera said in the statement that the city and county have been meeting about the runoff and that the county’s assistance can include “lists of election judges, a limited amount of election supplies and any other requests we can meet.”

Pueblo County elections department moves into Wells Fargo building

Pueblo West Metro District’s public information officer Anthony Sandstrom confirmed that they contracted with a single vendor, Community Resource Services, for all of the election administration in May.

Unlike the Pueblo West election, Stoller said that the city is preparing to do separate contracts for election equipment, printing and hiring election judges.

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

This article originally appeared on The Pueblo Chieftain: Pueblo city clerk will administer mayoral runoff election in 2024