Your Daily Guide

😵‍💫 Arapahoe County’s Plan to Fix Ballot Blunder

Four counties in Colorado are scrambling after mailing ballots to over 800,000 voters with a question on it they aren’t eligible to vote on. The question is Issue 7A, which asks if the sales tax in the Front Range Passenger Rail District should be increased to fund more frequent and expanded train service. Election workers in Adams, Arapahoe, Douglas and Weld counties now have to take extra steps to make sure only valid votes on 7A are counted. The Colorado Sun highlighted the issue in Arapahoe County, where the elections division has already devised a plan of attack for perhaps the most complicated fix. [Colorado Sun]

• Voters who SHOULD get the question but didn't: 318 voters in Columbine Valley of Arapahoe County should have received 7A on their ballot but did not, so now the county will send those voters a notice of the error and a replacement ballot.
• And those that SHOULD NOT? In areas of Arapahoe County where no one should have gotten 7A on their ballot, the application used to report election results can be filtered to exclude the incorrect precincts, even if votes are cast on 7A.
• The complicated part: It gets hairy in the areas of Arapahoe County where some voters are in the FRPR district and some are not. About 225 people in four of these split precincts have already been sent a replacement ballot, but in the other 10 split precincts, elections staff will have to separate out the valid 7A votes from the extraneous ones. [Colorado Sun]
• What about the other counties? In Douglas County, voters are encouraged to fill out their entire ballot, including 7A, whether or not they are actually eligible to vote on it. The county’s clerk and recorder said their plan is to use voter ID to separate ballots in the envelope sorter, which will put them into batches of “yes you can vote on 7A” or “no you can’t vote on 7A.” In Weld County, all ballots will be counted in a tabulating machine, but results for 7A will only include the ballots from inside the correct precincts. Adams County also has a number of split precincts like Arapahoe, and will be able to use ballot sorters to make sure the right votes are counted. [Denver7; 9News]

✅ Who Scored the Parady Endorsement?

Sarah Parady, the former Denver City Council member who stepped down earlier this year due to health issues, endorsed candidate Whitney Traylor in the 10-way race for her seat. The endorsement is also unexpected since Parady initially ran with the endorsement of the Denver chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and Traylor was registered as a Republican until right before the race. Parady told Denverite she admires his “track record as an employment attorney.” She also said Traylor mentored her while she was developing her own law practice. [Denverite]

❣️ Harvey Park Restaurant Pays It Forward

On social media, I’ve been seeing pictures of dozens of receipts hanging on the wall at Jade Cafe, and it’s giving me the warm-fuzzies. The small Chinese restaurant in Harvey Park created this wall of receipts with prepaid meals for neighbors who can’t afford it, with some customers choosing to pay it forward when they grab a meal. The cafe is also collecting donations of cleaning supplies, hygiene products or other daily essentials to be entered to win a painting. Go enjoy a yummy meal, help out your neighbors, and get a chance to win the majestic blue whale painting! [X, Facebook]

🤖 AI Bill Backlash Sparks New Pro-Business Lobbying Effort

In response to Colorado’s recent AI regulations, a group of tech executives and investors created a lobbying group called Founded Colorado to give themselves a louder voice at the capitol. The group’s goal is to proactively influence state politics after the first version of the AI bill caught them off guard. Some of the big names in the group include former DaVita CEO Kent Thiry and Ibotta CEO Bryan Leach. [BusinessDen 🔒]

💰 Taxes on Your Ballot

The upcoming election has a lot of measures that could impact what your taxes look like in the future as a Denverite. So today host Bree Davies sits down with Dr. Paul Teske, a professor at CU Denver’s School of Public Affairs, to break down Amendment 87, Proposition 136, Proposition NN, and what exactly we are voting for. [City Cast Denver 🎧]