Pueblo County quietly released a new set of voting results on Nov. 8, showing all frontrunners holding onto their leads in their respective races, though some candidates and voting issues are closing the gap.
The new results released Friday evening by the Pueblo County Elections Department include 3,446 additional votes.
Here’s where the 2024 Pueblo races stand as of Nov. 9.
Pueblo commissioners are still racing too close to call
In the closest race, for the District 2 seat on the Pueblo Board of County Commissioners, leader Paula McPheeters, a Republican, expanded her lead over incumbent Democratic Commissioner Daneya Esgar, while McPheeters’ advantage grew from just over 1,300 to more than 2,000 votes.
In the BOCC District 1 race, Democrat Miles Lucero saw his lead shrink by more than 600 votes: Early results on election night showed him a 3,203-vote lead over the second-place candidate, but Republican Steven Rodriguez closed part of the gap with the last results and is now behind by 2,593 votes.
Incumbent District 1 Commissioner Eppie Griego, who ran as an independent candidate after splitting with the Pueblo County Democratic Party in 2023, fell insurmountably behind the rest in the early stages of the election. He has now only collected 14,223 votes in total.
If Lucero and McPheeters hold on, the Pueblo BOCC would have a Republican majority and join the Pueblo Mayor’s Office and the Pueblo City Council, led by Republicans. If Rodriguez can stage a comeback and McPheeters’ lead holds, the BOCC would consist entirely of Republican commissioners.
Less than two years ago, before the election of current Commissioner Zach Swearingen, all members of the BOCC were Democrats. Before Swearingen, Pueblo voters had not elected a Republican to the BOCC in decades.
Colorado House incumbents maintain significant leads
Other notable results in the county’s latest vote dump include Democrat Matthew Martinez, the incumbent Colorado House District 62and Tisha Mauro, the Democratic incumbent Huiswijk 46, maintain their lead. Martinez had collected 54.18% of the votes in his race as of 11:45 PM on November 8, while Mauro had collected 53.15% of the votes in her contest.
Two other Colorado House races representing parts of Pueblo County were already decided before Friday, when incumbent Republican Reps. Ty Winter of HD-47 and Stephanie Luck of HD-60 handily won their re-election bids.
What is the status of Pueblo’s voting questions
According to the latest results, pueblo ballot numbers 2A, 2B, 2C and 4A were all less than 2,000 votes apart, but the failure of ballot 2D was seemingly confirmed with the final count, as the “No” votes outweighed the “Yes” ones. votes by more than 5,600.
For the measures aimed at updating the Pueblo City Charter, 2A is currently on track to be adopted, with a lead of 1,167 votes; 2B is behind by a razor-thin margin of only 195 votes; “Yes” on 2C remains in the lead with 1,991 votes; and 2D appears to have officially failed, as the “No” votes currently lead by a total of 5,641 votes.
County Ballot Measure 4A, which would increase the mill levy to fund Pueblo County School District 70, is trailing by 1,621 votes.
How many votes have not been counted yet?
It is currently unclear how many votes Pueblo County still needs to count. The county announced the “final unofficial election results” just after 1 a.m. on Nov. 6, but county officials later backtracked on whether those unofficial results were final, saying no in-person votes were counted on Election Day.
Pueblo County Elections Director Dan Lepik told the newspaper Chieftain On November 7, “approximately 5,996” people voted in person on Election Day. With the 3,446 new votes that were tabulated on Friday evening, at least 2,550 votes still had to be counted.
However, the Elections Department also continues to collect ballots from military voters, overseas voters, those who need signature repairs and those who have returned a ballot without a signature.
“Anyone who has not repaired their signature or signed their envelope has eight days after Election Day to get it to us,” Lepik said in a video posted Nov. 7 to the county’s Facebook page . “Those ballots will be processed and counted. on the ninth day.”
More on Pueblo’s 2024 elections: Pueblo County backtracks on ‘final’ election results and says in-person votes won’t be counted
Chieftain Editor Zach Hillstrom can be reached at zhillstrom@gannett.com, or on X, at @ZachHillstrom. Support local news and subscribe to the Pueblo Chieftain at Subscribe.chieftain.com.
This article originally appeared in The Pueblo Chieftain: Here’s who’s winning the Pueblo County races starting Nov. 9
