The public will have to wait a few more weeks to know the final outcome of Broomfield’s Question 300 — a 5-year proposed moratorium on the practice of hydraulic fracturing. Official election results show that proponents narrowly won by 17 votes, triggering an automatic recount.
Broomfield election officials spent more than 12 hours Thursday verifying hundreds of cured ballots and checking signatures under the watchful eyes of more than a dozen lawyers and election observers.
“The recount is expected to take two or three days once it starts,” said Broomfield Clerk and Recorder Jim Candelarie in a press release. “It will be scheduled next week when election judges are secured and after the tabulation machines are programmed to count only that question.”
The news is a big change from the last vote count issued from Broomfield on election night, which showed opponents narrowly winning by only 13 votes.
The reason why the vote tally changed is that Broomfield officials had hundreds of ballots that needed to be “cured,” meaning there were issues like signatures not matching what was on file. There were also military and overseas ballots to be counted, which have a later deadline than Election Day.
Typically those ballots are added onto the final vote count when election officials release the “official” election results. But in the case of Question 300 every vote counts.
If the vote stands, Broomfield would then join Fort Collins, Boulder, and Lafayette in approving a measure to ban or place a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in the 2013 election cycle.
