Town of Superior forgets to submit ballot question for November election

SUPERIOR, Colo. — When you get your election ballot and fill in too many bubbles in one race, that’s called an overvote. When you don’t fill in any bubbles, that’s called an undervote. And when your town forgets to submit a ballot question altogether, that’s called a Superior screw-up.

Voters in the town of Superior expecting to vote on three local ballot issues will only see two.

Superior voters will still see a sales tax increase question. The request is to raise the sales tax an additional .315% for pools, parks, playgrounds and streets.

The town voters will also decide between six candidates for three town trustee positions.

The third issue needs no explanation because it is not printed on the ballot.

“What’s missing is our home rule charter question,” Superior Mayor Mark Lacis said.

In 2023, voters elected nine candidates for a Home Rule charter commission. That commission created a proposed charter for residents to vote on in the November election.

“They wrote a really nice Home Rule charter and that will not be on the general election ballot in November,” Lacis said.

There are 107 Home Rule cities and towns in Colorado.

A Home Rule charter is like a local constitution and gives the town the power to govern independently on issues of purely local concern, instead of relying on state law.

Issues like:

• Initiative and referendum of measures
• Recall
• Form of government
• Qualifications, terms of office, number of councilmembers and method of election
• Election procedures
• Administrative organization
• Boards and commissions
• Procedures for passage of ordinances, resolutions and motions
• Personnel, merit, or civil service system
• Organization of municipal courts
• Legal and judicial affairs
• Budget control and financing
• Municipal borrowing

How is it that a ballot question will not be on the ballot?

“As far as we know, our town staff neglected to submit the Home Rule charter question to the Boulder County Clerk and Recorder’s Office when they submitted the trustee candidates, as well as the sales tax ballot question,” Lacis said.

“We send proofs of those laid-out ballots to each of our entities. They then approve and sign off on those,” Boulder County Elections Director Stephanie Gnoza said.

Boulder County coordinates elections for cities, towns and municipalities within the county. Each one with local issues on their ballot gets a proof to be approved before that ballot gets sent to the printer.

“They actually found a typo in those proofs in their TABOR issue,” Gnoza said, referring to the sales tax question. “And so, in that sense, I think the proofing process did work a bit.”

When Gnoza sent Superior the sample ballots, the town replied to the email with a correction in the sales tax question, changing the word “issue” to “issued.”

The town did not say an entire ballot question was missing.

“I think there needs to be accountability for this type of mistake,” Lacis said.

The town will hold a special meeting next week to determine if it will hold a special election in December. A special election would be needed because there are strict deadlines regarding Home Rule charter votes.

“That deadline, I believe, is sometime in early December. So, we need to have a special election otherwise we have to start over,” Lacis said.

That would impact voter turnout and come with a cost that the town will have to cover.

“Yeah, I think our voter turnout will be considerably smaller than it would have been if we were participating in the coordinated general election in November,” Lacis said. “I can’t imagine that the board would not vote to send this to the voters, but we’re certainly going to want to understand what the costs are associated with it and what the ramifications are of not doing so.”

Since the election would need to be in December, Boulder County is unlikely able to help. It is possible that recounts will be needed in races that Boulder County oversees.

“In early December, we are potentially still within the recount window for the general election, so we may not even be done with the November election still,” Gnoza said.

Superior could run a special election itself or hire a third party.

The special meeting is Tuesday at 6 p.m. to call for a special election to be held on Dec. 10.