Manitou mayoral race too close to call
Fewer than a dozen votes separate the two candidates in the race for Manitou Springs mayor.
As of Wednesday, Nicole Nicolette has 877 votes and Coreen Toll has 867 votes.
Nicoletta is cautiously optomistic she will squeak out a victory.
“I woke up at midnight and feverishly looked at the elections site and saw I was ahead by 10 votes and that was the final vote,” the city coucilwoman said. “I have to admit, I did a small victory dance.”
“Every vote does matter,” El Paso County Deputy Clerk Ryan Parsell said. “One vote can make a difference. In this circumstance, a very small number of people decided the direction of a city or could decide the direction of the city once the vote is settled.”
As of Wednesday night, the 10-vote difference does not trigger an automatic recount.
According to the El Paso County Clerk and Recorder’s Office, under Colorado law, an automatic recount is triggered only when “the difference between the highest number of votes cast in that election contest and the next highest number of votes cast in that election contest is less than or equal to one-half of 1 percent of the highest vote cast in that election contest.” This is not the same as candidates or a question being separated by a 0.5 percent difference of the percentages reported.
The Clerk and Recorder’s Office offered the following example:
“If candidate 1 receives 500 votes for 50.20 percent and candidate 2 receives 496 votes for 49.79 percent, the casual observer would infer that an automatic recount is imminent. However, the 0.5 percent threshold is calculated off of the 500 votes earned by candidate 1. In this example, 0.5 percent of the votes earned by candidate 1 is three votes, so candidate 2 would need to have three votes separating the two, not 4. In this example, the results would not trigger an automatic recount.”
A candidate may request a recount, but a candidate may not request a non-automatic recount before the official canvass. Also, under that circumstance, the person requesting the recount is responsible for paying for the recount.
The official determination for a recount cannot be made until the deadline for military and overseas voters or ballot curing has passed and the clerk ‘s office completes the official canvass. Under Colorado law, the deadline for military and overseas ballots to be returned to the clerk ‘s office is Nov. 12 . The deadline for the clerk ‘s office to complete the official canvass is Nov. 20 .
