The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Final results delayed for CB and Gunnison precincts
By Katherine Nettles
Gunnison County generally echoed state-wide trends in Tuesday’s presidential primary election, also known as Super Tuesday, voting in favor of Bernie Sanders as the Democratic candidate and Donald Trump as the Republican incumbent candidate. But specific breakdowns of the numbers from the Crested Butte and Gunnison precincts were not available as of Wednesday afternoon, March 4, due to the Gunnison County election office having trouble tabulating the high count of votes that came in on Election Day.
Gunnison County reported a voter turnout of around 49 percent, with 6,500 ballots cast from of 13,173 registered voters. According to unofficial results posted on the Colorado Secretary of State website, in Gunnison County most ballots cast were for the Democratic primary, which represented 58 percent of the turnout. Bernie Sanders earned the most Democratic votes at 47 percent, and Joseph Biden came in second with 18 percent. Elizabeth Warren came in third, with 16 percent and Michael Bloomberg, who later announced he was dropping out of the race after seeing flat results nationally, earned 14 percent. Incumbent Donald Trump earned 91 percent of Gunnison County’s Republican votes.
Between the time of unofficial results as posted on Tuesday night and Wednesday press time, the Gunnison County election office counted at least another 1,000 votes, and expected to be authenticating results well into Thursday. Gunnison County elections director Diane Folowell said the delayed results came from a surprisingly high turnout on Tuesday.
“We had a lot of last-minute turnout. We had a steady line all day in Gunnison and in CB,” said Followell.
Between 2:30 and 7 p.m. that day, she said, the office probably accepted 2,500 ballots. “We have processes we have to go through, and this is just what it takes,” she explained. “There are so many steps that go into security and securing anonymity, that we just can’t skip.”
This was Gunnison County’s first presidential primary in 20 years, and Followell said the elections officials didn’t know what to expect.
“Leading up to election day, ballot counts were low. They were really low, and we didn’t know what would happen.” As for what this means for the next primary and ultimately, the general election in November, Followell said it would help if people voted earlier.
“I understand that in this case, you had candidates still dropping out…but it makes it hard. You’re still going to have those voters who want to vote on Election Day,” she said.
Followell also predicted the voter turnout in November will set records in Gunnison County.
