News
KNOW YOUR VOTE: Everything you need to know about Colorado’s ballot initiatives and voting
DENVER – On this Election Day, Colorado voters should only be dropping their ballots off at polling centers or county clerk’s offices at this point to be sure they are counted.
Click here to find your nearest polling center.
Coloradans can also track their ballot if it’s already been submitted. People statewide can track their ballot through the Secretary of State’s Office’s tool here. There are also local tracking tools for Denver County, Arapahoe County and Boulder County. Click on each respective county to be redirected to the ballot tracker site. Continue reading
Election 2016 live blog: Updates from Election Day in Colorado and nationwide
DENVER – Denver7 will update this live blog throughout Election Day and Wednesday with news from Colorado and across the nation. Post are in reverse-chronological order. For more, head over to our Election 2016 page. Continue reading
Colorado voters approve Proposition 106, ‘right-to-die’ ballot measure
DENVER – Colorado voters on Tuesday approved a “right-to-die” measure that would allow terminally ill people to receive medication that would end their lives.
With 50 percent of counties reporting, Proposition 106 had garnered 65 percent of the vote.
The proposition would change Colorado statutes to allow any “mentally-capable” adult aged 18+ with a diagnosed terminal illness that leaves them six months or less to live to receive a prescription from a licensed physician that can be taken voluntarily to end their life.
The person’s primary physician and a secondary physician would both have to confirm the person has six or fewer months to live, and would also have to be deemed mentally-capable enough to make the end-of-life decision by two physicians as well.
The change in statute would create immunity from civil or criminal lawsuits, as well as from professional discipline, for the physicians aiding the patient in dying. Under current law, those physicians face felony manslaughter charges for doing so.
But it would also be a class-2 felony for anyone to tamper with a request for the end-of-life medication or coerce a patient into making an end-of-life decision
Colorado is the fifth state to legalize similar measures. Oregon, California, Vermont and Washington already have similar laws on their books. Montana’s lawbooks leave the question open as to whether such measures are legal in the state.
Read more on Proposition 106 here.
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Colorado Republicans take 7,000 vote lead over Democrats in early voting day before Election Day
DENVER – With just two days of voting to go, Colorado’s registered Republicans have taken a lead of about 7,300 ballot submissions over Democrats.
After Democrats led the tally for much of the first two weeks of the early-voting period, registered Republicans started making up the difference late last week and took a small lead by Friday night.
Over the weekend and Friday, Republicans turned in 104,605 ballots, compared to 90,680 from Democrats and 98,439 from unaffiliated voters.
The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office updates the number of ballots returned via mail and votes made in-person each day, and breaks down the votes by which party each person who submitted a ballot is registered for.
Every ballot is categorized by each voter’s registration and does not say how a person voted. Colorado law allowed county clerks to start counting ballots on Oct. 24.
The county clerk’s offices open the ballots, check their signatures to validate them, and scan the results. However, the results will not be tallied or released until after the polls close on Nov. 8.
As of the Secretary of State’s Monday morning tally, Republicans had submitted 652,380 ballots (35.2 percent of total submissions); Democrats had turned in 645,020 ballots (34.8 percent of total submissions) and unaffiliated voters had turned in 527,706 ballots (28.5 of total submissions).
The 1,852,029 ballots returned so far represent about 56.6 percent of registered active voters in Colorado as of numbers released Nov. 1 by the Secretary of State’s Office.
In 2012’s presidential election, which did not utilize an all-mail ballot system as this year’s does, saw a 71 percent turnout in Colorado.
When comparing the number of ballots submitted so far by each party to the number of active registered voters in each party, the latest tallies show Republicans have now overtaken Democrats in terms of the percentage of active voters who have submitted their ballot.
Voting turnout percentages by party registration now sit as follows: 62 percent for Colorado Democrats; 63.25 percent for Colorado Republicans and 46.25 percent for unaffiliated Colorado voters.
In Jefferson County, long considered a bell-weather in Colorado, Democrats (75,967) have submitted 1,000 more ballots than Republicans (74,969). Unaffiliated voters lag just behind, at 69,559 votes submitted so far.
Larimer County votes are almost nearly evenly-split as well: about 3,000 more Republicans have submitted ballots than Democrats, though there are about 9,000 more registered Republicans in the county.
And in Arapahoe County, where more unaffiliated voters are registered than Democrats or Republicans, Democrats and Republicans sit near-even in the percentage of voters registered to each party that have voted.
But overall statewide, unaffiliated voters still lag way behind Democrats and Republicans. Though they are the largest electorate in Colorado, unaffiliated voters have submitted at least 120,000 ballots less than either Republicans or Democrats.
Colorado polls released late last week showed Clinton held anywhere between a 3 and 6 percentage point lead over Trump in Colorado.
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Federal judge keeps Colorado ‘ballot selfie’ law on books but says AG, DA’s can’t prosecute
DENVER – A law prohibiting people from taking pictures of their completed ballots, or taking “ballot selfies,” will stay on Colorado’s law books, but the state’s attorney general and district attorneys won’t be allowed to charge anyone who does so.
A U.S. District Court of Colorado judge on Friday evening issued the order to enjoin both the Attorney General’s Office and Denver District Attorney’s Office from prosecuting or investigating violations of Colorado Revised Statute §1-13-712 unless it happens in connection with another crime – election-related or not. Continue reading
Niwot High School head football coach charged with assaulting student
BOULDER COUNTY, Colo. – The head football coach at Niwot High School faces charges after he allegedly choked and kneed a student in the groin for cursing in class last week.
Boulder County sheriff’s deputies arrested Dylan Hollingsworth, 43, of Longmont, Friday morning. He was booked on second-degree assault and third-degree assault charges. The first is a felony and the latter is a misdemeanor.
The alleged assault happened on Thursday, Oct. 27. Hollingsworth had allegedly taken issue with a 17-year-old student’s use of profanity in a weightlifting class, and warned his students that the next person who cursed would face punishment and “might possible be hit or kicked,” according to the sheriff’s office.
At some point shortly after the warning, according to the sheriff’s office, the 17-year-old student cursed while singing a song, to which Hollingsworth allegedly responded by applying “pressure to the student’s larynx, causing the student to struggle to breathe.”
Hollingsworth then allegedly kneed to the student in the groin. At some point, a school resource officer found out about the alleged assault and reported it.
After turning himself in Friday morning, Hollingsworth was booked and released. He is next due in court on Dec. 8.
The school did not comment on the matter only saying that it is a personnel issue and an ongoing investigation.
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Donald Trump will hold rally Saturday night in Denver amid last-minute blitz by both parties
DENVER – Donald Trump will hold a campaign rally in Denver Saturday night as the cherry on top of a busy week in Colorado politics filled with visits from both major campaigns.
Trump’s rally will start at 9:30 p.m. at the National Western Complex. Doors open at 6 p.m. Earlier Saturday, former New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani will stop by the Denver Trump campaign office at 1 p.m. He’ll have an open question-and-answer session directly afterward.
Trump’s visit comes after visits this week by Mike Pence, Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump Jr. and Chelsea Clinton.
Bill Clinton is campaigning for his wife, Hillary, Friday in Pueblo, Denver and Fort Collins, and Sen. Bernie Sanders is campaigning for Clinton and Morgan Carroll Saturday in Colorado Springs, Castle Rock and Aurora.
Former Republican candidate Ben Carson and Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin will campaign for Trump Friday in Colorado Springs and Aurora.
Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson also announced Friday he’ll be in Colorado this weekend; he will campaign at Colorado Christian University in Lakewood at 3 p.m. Sunday.
The blitz of Colorado by both campaigns comes as recent polls in Colorado show Clinton’s once-large gap has narrowed considerably in recent weeks.
A University of Denver poll released Wednesday showed the two in a dead heat in a four-way race and Clinton leading by one percentage point in a two-way race.
Thursday, Magellan Strategies released a poll showing Clinton up by six percentage points. Other polls have shown Clinton with a lead of anywhere between 1 and 3 percent in the state.
Early voting numbers released by the Colorado Secretary of State Friday show Republicans have also narrowed what had at one point been a near-30,000 vote lead by Republicans to about 7,000 votes.
Though those counts don’t show how a person voted, they do show that registered Democrats and Republicans have so far outpaced the state’s largest electorate base, unaffiliated voters, in early ballot submissions.
People wishing to sign up for tickets to the Trump rally can do so here.
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New polls show older voters supporting Trump, Amendment 70 & 71 support remains largely unchanged
DENVER – New survey numbers from Denver-based pollster Magellan Strategies show older voters are far more likely to vote for Donald Trump than younger voters in Colorado and took a look at two of Colorado’s ballot measures just days out from Election Day.
The presidential polling survey released Thursday shows Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by six percentage points when factoring in third-party candidates, 44 percent to 38 percent.
The poll, which surveyed 500 likely Colorado voters via land lines and cell phones, found Trump leads male voters 44 to 39 percent, but that Clinton has a 17-point advantage over Trump among female voters.
The poll shows unaffiliated voters are picking Clinton by a 4-to-3 margin. Clinton polled at 39 percent among unaffiliated voters surveyed, compared to 29 percent for Trump and 13 percent for Libertarian Gary Johnson. About 12 percent of unaffiliated voters surveyed said they were still undecided.
And when one looks at the breakdown by age groups, there is a stark trend that shows younger voters are picking Clinton or third-party candidates. But when looking at older age groups, people are increasingly likely to vote for Trump the older they are.
Among voters aged 18-34, Clinton leads Trump by 27 percentage points, 50 percent to 23 percent. Johnson polled at 13 percent among that age group – the largest demographic share for any candidate not named Trump or Clinton. Jill Stein drew 5 percent in the poll, and 7 percent of voters aged 18-34 are still undecided.
In the 35-44 age group, Clinton leads Trump 52-32 percent and Johnson drew 8 percent in the poll.
But those numbers turn sharply in the 45-54 age group, where Trump leads Clinton 41-38 percent in the poll. Johnson also drew 7 percent in the age group.
Among voters aged 55-64, the poll flips back to favor Clinton, 45-36 percent over Trump. Fewer voters in that age group are picking third-party candidates (only 9 percent between Johnson, Jill Stein and the other candidates on the ballot) and 10 percent said they were still undecided.
But Trump owns the Colorado senior vote according to the poll, which shows voters aged 65+ favoring Trump 58 percent to Clinton’s 35 percent. Three percent of those polled in the age group said they’d vote for Johnson, but Stein and other third-party candidates received 0 percent support.
Eighty-seven percent of Democrats in the poll say they’ll vote for Clinton, while only 3 percent said they’ll vote for Trump. Those numbers are similar on the contrary for Trump, as 82 percent of Republicans polled said they’d vote for the New York businessman, compared to 5 percent who said they’d vote for Clinton.
The survey has a +/- 4.38 percent margin of error. Magellan Strategies’ previous Colorado poll, conducted Oct. 12, showed Clinton drawing 40 percent of the vote, compared to 35 percent for Trump. Johnson’s support fell by 5 percentage points between the two polls, and Stein’s fell by 3 percentage points.
The poll queried between 60 and 85 people from each of Colorado’s seven congressional districts. Of those polled, 322 of the 500 people had already voted.
White voters were more-commonly registered as Republicans in the poll, which Hispanic and black voters were overwhelmingly registered as Democrats.
POLLS ON AMENDMENTS 70, 71 RELEASED
Magellan also conducted polling on Colorado ballot measures Amendment 70 and Amendment 71 over the same poll. They are the first polls done by Magellan on the measures since August, and the first overall since a Rocky Mountain PBS poll conducted mid-September.
The Amendment 70 poll finds 54 percent of voters support the initiative, which would increase the statewide minimum wage to $9.30 per hour starting Jan. 1, then raise it every year by $0.90 per hour until it reaches $12 an hour by Jan. 1, 2020.
Forty-three percent of those polled said they opposed the measure, and 3 percent were undecided.
These numbers differ only slightly from the August poll, which found 55 percent support, 42 percent opposition and 3 percent of people polled were undecided.
Women are far more likely to support the measure: 63 percent of women support the measure, compared to 34 percent who oppose it.
On the contrary, men are generally more opposed to raising the state’s minimum wage, according to the poll. It shows 52 percent of men oppose the measure, while 44 percent support it.
Young voters are far more likely to support the wage hike; 63 percent of voters aged 18-34 support the measure. That number decreases with nearly every increasing age group. Voters in the 45-54 age group show 55 percent support, but in both the 55-64 and 65+ age groups, support outweighs opposition by just 3 percent.
The poll shows the strongest support among Democrats and unaffiliated voters.
The polling on Amendment 71, which would change the process for amending the state constitution in Colorado, shows few minds have changed since Magellan’s last poll on that measure as well.
In August, support outweighed opposition 47-37 percent, while 15 percent were undecided. More people appear to have made up their minds since then, as the recent poll shows 51 percent support, 41 percent opposition and 8 percent of those polled are still undecided on the amendment.
Older Americans are far more likely to support Amendment 71. Support outweighs opposition among the 55-64 age group 59-36 percent, and among those polled aged 65+, 61 supported the measure, compared to 32 percent who opposed it.
But in the youngest voting group, people aged 18-34, 52 percent oppose the amendment, compared to 39 percent who support it.
The pro-71 political action committee, Raise the Bar Colorado, has raised more than $4 million for media and advertising, which dwarfs the amounts raised by opposition PACs.
The polls come as the major candidates and their surrogates flood Colorado in the final week before the General Election – seemingly knowing how tight the race in Colorado is.
Democrats have so far cast more ballots than Republicans or unaffiliated voters in Colorado, but Republicans have narrowed that gap toward the end of this week.
NEW KEATING RESEARCH, PUBLIC POLICY POLLS HAVE CLINTON UP BY 5
A new poll released Friday by Colorado-based Keating Research has Clinton up by five percentage points on Trump, 43-38. The poll surveyed 605 likely voters, and also found Clinton had 39 percent of support from unaffiliated voters surveyed, compared to 27 percent for Trump.
The poll also shows Democrat Michael Bennet has an 11-point lead over Republican Darryl Glenn in the U.S. Senate race, 49-38.
Public Policy Polling also released a new Colorado survey Friday that also shows Clinton (48 percent) with a five-point lead over Trump (43 percent).
In the same poll, Bennet leads Glenn 50-40. Fifty-five percent of people polled said they viewed Clinton as “unfavorable” and 60 percent view Trump as “unfavorable.”
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Early voting lead for Colorado Democrats dwindles as Republican voting surges
DENVER – The early-voting lead for Colorado Democrats has all-but disappeared just four days before Election Day.
Registered Republicans again Thursday narrowed the gap between the number of ballots they have submitted so far and the number of votes submitted by Democrats.
As of Thursday morning, the gap was 14,000 votes. But as of Friday morning, Democrats have only submitted about 7,000 more than Republicans.
The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office updates the number of ballots returned via mail and votes made in-person each day, and breaks down the votes by which party each person who submitted a ballot is registered for.
Every ballot is categorized by each voter’s registration and does not say how a person voted. Colorado law allowed county clerks to start counting ballots on Oct. 24.
The county clerk’s offices open the ballots, check their signatures to validate them, and scan the results. However, the results will not be tallied or released until after the polls close on Nov. 8.
Though Democrats have led the voting tally since ballots first started being tallied on Oct. 24, they submitted fewer ballots Thursday than Republicans and unaffiliated voters for the first time in the early-voting period.
Democrats submitted 45,402 votes Thursday, compared to 45,992 from unaffiliated voters and 53,018 from Republicans.
Early ballot submissions statewide amount to 1,553,325 as of Friday morning – approximately 47.5 of the state’s electorate.
In the last presidential election in 2012, 71 percent of Coloradans voted. Republicans led the early vote throughout that period before a late surge by Democrats, though this election is the first presidential election in which Colorado has used an all-mail-in ballot system.
The percentage of registered Republicans who have already voted (53.1 percent) is also now nearly-identical to the percentage of Democrats who have voted (53.25 percent). Of unaffiliated voters, 37.6 percent have already submitted ballots.
Unaffiliated voters represent Colorado’s largest voting electorate, with 1.14 million registered voters as of Nov. 1.
Four of the counties Denver7 is keeping an eye on have already equaled or topped 50 percent voter turnout: Boulder County (50 percent); Douglas County (50.4 percent); Jefferson County (51 percent) and La Plata County (53.3 percent).
A higher percentage of registered Republicans than Democrats have now voted in Adams, Arapahoe, El Paso and Weld counties. Democrats continue to have higher turnout in Boulder, Denver, Douglas, Jefferson, La Plata and Larimer counties.
A poll released Wednesday by the University of Denver showed Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in a dead heat in a four-way race.
And a Magellan Strategies poll released Thursday shows Clinton leads Trump by six points, 44-38 percent.
That comes as both campaigns have entered full-court press mode in Colorado – sending either themselves or a pool of surrogates to the state in the final week before Election Day.
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Authorities announce 1977 cold case murder of Audrey Hurtado in Buena Vista has been solved
BUENA VISTA, Colo. – Authorities announced Thursday that a 39-year-old cold case murder has been solved, but the accused suspect will never spend a day in prison because he’s been dead for 35 years.
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation reopened the murder case of Audrey Hurtado, 17, in 2009. She was stabbed to death and her body left in a Buena Vista field in July 1977. She had gone on a walk, but never returned. Hurtado’s body was found three days later.
Buena Vista police and the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Department were among the agencies that worked to eventually identify 80 possible suspects, who were all investigated.
A 15-year-old boy who was visiting Buena Vista from California at the time, whom investigators have identified only as “C.K.,” was among the suspects because he had stolen a knife similar to the one believed to be used in the murder from a store that week.
C.K. was staying at a home just one block from Hurtado’s sister’s house, with whom she was staying at the time.
Investigators never found enough evidence to file charges against C.K., and he was killed in a motorcycle crash in California in 1981.
But law enforcement officers investigating the case at the time were able to collect biological samples from Hurtado and another person whose DNA was found other her fingernails. Buena Vista police said the sample collection was “exemplary” police work considering DNA testing was not available in 1977.
After CBI reopened the case in May 2009, agents interviewed witnesses again and collected more evidence.
The samples collected from underneath Hurtado’s fingernails were tested with new DNA technology, and when cross-examined with DNA samples from members of C.K.’s family, investigators matched the DNA to C.K.
Buena Vista police say the match was presented to the Chaffee County District Attorney, who determined the case was solved.
CBI agents have since met with Hurtado’s family members to tell them about who her killer was and how they identified him.
More stories on Colorado cold cases can be found here.