Opponents call for Issue 7A to be tossed after 800,000-ballot error

About 800,000 Colorado voters received ballots listing a passenger-rail tax question they are not eligible to vote on, after four counties printed the measure from an outdated district map. The head of the campaign opposing the tax now says Issue 7A should be thrown out entirely.

The error affects ballots in Adams, Arapahoe, Douglas and Weld counties. Issue 7A asks voters inside the Front Range Passenger Rail District whether to approve a 0.333 percent sales and use tax, projected to generate $295 million a year, along with $580 million in debt authority to build the Colorado Connector rail service.

The district's boundaries were redrawn this year under Senate Bill 26-172, shrinking the district from 13 counties to 31 cities along the planned rail line plus Sterling Ranch in Douglas County. The rail district never delivered the new map to the four county clerks, who printed ballots using the old, larger boundaries.

Adams County Clerk Josh Zygielbaum said about 275,000 of the roughly 330,000 ballots sent in his county include 7A for voters who cannot vote on it. Arapahoe County reported 262,868 affected ballots. In Weld County, 16,217 voters in Erie received the question despite living outside the new lines. Douglas County printed 7A on all 289,000 ballots it sent, though only 5,967 residents in Sterling Ranch are eligible.

The mistake also ran in reverse in one Arapahoe County town: about 340 voters in Columbine Valley who live inside the new district lines did not get 7A on their ballots. The county is mailing those voters corrected ballots.

The Front Range Passenger Rail District apologized to the four clerks for the communication breakdown. General manager Sal Pace accepted responsibility for failing to make sure the clerks had the new map, while noting the law did not explicitly require the district to deliver it. "I'm trying to find solutions here," Pace said.

The Colorado Secretary of State's office directed the counties to program their voting systems to count 7A votes only from eligible voters and to test the setup before tabulation. In most precincts, ballot styles will separate eligible ballots from ineligible ones. But in parts of Bow Mar in Arapahoe County and Sterling Ranch in Douglas County, voters may share a ballot style, forcing hand review and duplication onto a ballot style without 7A.

Ballot processing begins Oct. 19, and no votes have been tallied yet, according to a joint statement from the state and the Colorado County Clerks Association. Voters should vote the ballot they were sent; only votes cast by eligible voters will count on 7A.

Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute and head of the Affordable Colorado Issue Committee that opposes the measure, has called for 7A to be invalidated. "What is more problematic is incompetency, and that's what this is," Caldara told KDVR. "And do we reward the incompetency by putting them on the gravy train for decades and decades to come?" A spokesperson for the Secretary of State's office said invalidation would be up to the courts.

Former Secretary of State Wayne Williams told the Denver Post the scale of the error is unmatched. "I am not aware of anything anywhere remotely near this magnitude occurring," Williams said.

Pace said he has received no direction from the district's board to pull 7A from the ballot, so the measure stays before voters on Nov. 3. The district says Denver-to-Fort Collins service through Boulder is expected to begin in 2029 even if 7A fails.