This story was produced as part of the Colorado Capitol News Alliance. It first appeared at coloradosun.com.
About 800,000 voters who shouldn’t be able to weigh in on whether to increase taxes to fund expanded passenger train service along the Front Range received the question on their ballots this week, according to a letter sent from a lawyer for the Front Range Passenger Rail district to county clerks Wednesday.
The voters in Adams, Arapahoe, Douglas and Weld counties who live outside of the Front Range Passenger Rail District are seeing Ballot Issue 7A on their ballots in error, as first reported by 9News.
In a statement, the Colorado Department of State and Colorado County Clerks Association said the Front Range Passenger Rail District, the special tax district created to raise money for a Front Range passenger rail system, did not adequately alert county clerks about changes made to the district’s boundary by state lawmakers earlier this year.
Lawmakers trimmed out many parts of the district, leaving residents in only certain portions of some counties eligible to vote on the tax increase.
“The Colorado Department of State is in close communication with the Colorado County Clerk’s Association, and the office is currently working on guidance to the counties on the proper administration of this ballot issue,” the groups said in a statement. “Only eligible voters will have their vote in this contest counted. Ballot processing may begin on October 19.
The groups did not provide any details on whether the mistake will impact final election result timing on Nov. 3 or how they would separate votes that should not count from the results.
In a statement, Sal Pace, general manager of the Front Range Passenger Rail District, said the organization has requested guidance from the Secretary of State’s office about how to correct the issue.
“When the legislature updated the District’s boundaries this spring, we should have walked every county clerk through the change,” Pace said. “Although we weren’t legally obligated to do so, it would have helped avoid the confusion that followed.”
Arapahoe County Clerk and Recorder Joan Lopez said in a statement about 262,000 voters received the ballot question who shouldn’t have. Lopez said voters “do not need to take any steps other than voting their ballot as they normally would.”
Clerks offices in Adams, Douglas and Weld counties did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The ballot question will determine the future of passenger rail service in Colorado.
Limited passenger train service between Denver and Fort Collins is already planned to start in 2029 with just three daily round trips.
Ballot Issue 7A asks voters in several Front Range cities whether they want to tax themselves to pay for more frequent service with a stop as far south as Pueblo aboard a train recently named the Colorado Connector, or CoCo.
The rail measure is intended to ask 2.4 million voters in about 30 communities from 13 counties that would be served by the rail service to approve a new 0.333% sales tax increase — amounting to about 33 cents on a $100 purchase.
The sales tax increase is projected to raise $295 million annually. The measure also asks voters to allow the Front Range Passenger Rail District to sell $580 million in bonds.
Earlier this year, state lawmakers trimmed out many parts of the Front Range counties that first made up the tax district when it was created in 2021. Now the district includes municipalities and special districts where at least 20% of the population lives within five miles of a planned train station, including Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Sterling Ranch, Littleton, Denver, Westminster, Broomfield, Louisville, Boulder, Longmont, Loveland and Fort Collins.
