The Count
From the Secretary of State’s feed, version 386035, Saturday morning:
Eileen Laubacher (D): 185,818, 48.8%
Lauren Boebert (R): 182,646, 47.9%
Douglas Mangeris (L): 12,598, 3.3%
381,062 ballots counted.
That’s about 97% of what anybody expects to come in.
Laubacher’s margin is 0.83 points.
What Ballots Came in Overnight
2,377 votes. All of them from two counties, Arapahoe with 2,177 and Larimer with 200. Laubacher is winning both. Her lead grew another 103.
Look at the week. Thursday morning she was up 2,513. Friday, 3,069. Today, 3,172. Her margin has not gone down in a single batch since Wednesday night. Not one.
Where the Rest of the Vote Is Now
Roughly 11,250 ballots left. About 85% of those sit in Douglas, Larimer and Arapahoe, and she’s carrying all three. Weld finished Thursday. El Paso finished Friday. I talked to Weld Clerk Carly Koppes myself, and her people were done and proud of it.
Run every remaining county at the split it’s been producing all week and the leftovers net Laubacher another 362 votes.
The Recount Line
Colorado triggers an automatic recount when the margin falls within 0.5% of the leader’s total. For Laubacher that’s 929 votes right now.
She’s up 3,172. That’s three and a half times the line.
So forget winning for a second. For Boebert to even get the free recount she’s fundraising off, she has to find more than 2,200 net votes out of about 11,250. To actually win she needs roughly 65% of what’s left, a 30-point margin. Her best county all week was Weld at 62%, and Weld is closed.
Boebert is trying to shut me up. The hearing is November 16.
Her campaign is out there talking about recounts. Meanwhile her lawyers are in a Colorado courtroom asking a judge for a restraining order against me. A journalist. For reporting on her.
I filed a special motion to dismiss under Colorado’s anti-SLAPP statute. The judge ruled the statute applies. Briefs are filed. The hearing is November 16. That’s nine days.
The legal defense fund is short. Every dollar of it goes to the lawyers fighting this one. If you think a member of Congress shouldn’t get to use a protection order to shut down coverage of her own conduct, now is when it matters.
DONATE HERE TO THE LEGAL DEFENSE FUND
Please donate today. Thank you.
David Wheeler
What BeetleJuice Boebert is Saying
Scott Gessler, her campaign lawyer and a former Republican Secretary of State, said Thursday night that the campaign is “investigating some very unusual voting patterns” and expects “this election to head to a recount, one way or another.”
He didn’t name a county. He didn’t name a precinct. He didn’t name a batch. Colorado Politics asked him for details and he didn’t answer. Not one clerk in the district has reported an irregularity, and neither has the Secretary of State’s office.
That same day a Boebert fundraising email told donors the race “goes into an automatic recount if the margin is 0.5% or lower.” That is not the law. The threshold is 0.5% of the leader’s total, not of all votes cast. Gessler didn’t answer questions about it. Neither did her spokesman.
They’re raising money off a number they got wrong.
Where it Ends
Push this week’s county splits through the ballots still out and you get something like 191,400 for Laubacher, 187,900 for Boebert, 12,970 for Mangeris. Turnout lands near 392,300, about 87% of 2024. Final margin somewhere around 3,500, call it a range of 2,800 to 4,300.
Cure, provisional and military ballots come in through November 12 and are not in that number. They’ll add a few hundred. They have never flipped a margin this size.
Where I’ve Been Wrong in the Post-Election Count
Thursday I had the final margin at about 2,700. Friday I moved it to 3,900 because the overnight batches ran better for Laubacher than the county averages said they would. Today I’m at 3,500, because there turn out to be fewer ballots left than I thought yesterday.
I’ll keep posting the arithmetic. Including the days it makes me look dumb.
DBW
About the Author
David B. Wheeler is the president and co-founder of American Muckrakers, the Western North Carolina accountability organization best known for helping end Madison Cawthorn’s congressional career in 2022, the rare instance in modern politics of a sitting incumbent losing his own primary because somebody bothered to do the homework. Since then, American Muckrakers has turned its attention to Lauren Boebert, Ken Paxton, and a growing roster of politicians who confuse public office with a personal ATM. He publishes accountability journalism at Muckrakers.Today.
Wheeler co-hosts the MUCK YOU! podcast with Col. Moe Davis, the retired Air Force colonel and former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay. He is the author of Color the Crooks, Case File #001: Lauren Boebert, the coloring book James Carville endorsed with the words “She earned every damn page. Buy it.” *He is also the founder of VoteROI.com, a political data company built on 86.9 million FEC records that helps donors figure out where their money actually goes, which, as this essay makes clear, is a question more people should be asking.
Before all that, Wheeler spent three decades in politics, elections, and event production in more than 50 countries on all seven continents. Along the way he lowered the Mississippi River, produced the first professional sports event ever held in Moscow, and produced the first marathon ever run on Antarctica. His political education started early: Page for the Iowa House of Representatives, intern in the United States Senate, and National Committeeman for Iowa on the Young Democrats of America national committee. David was the lead advance guy for then Senator Obama in Iowa City, Iowa, in October of 2006, and then again during his presidential announcement in Waterloo, Iowa, in February 2007. And, he has some good stories from both experiences.
An Iowa native and proud Hawkeye, Wheeler is a father of three and lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina, in the district Chuck Edwards is currently failing. He believes sunlight is the best disinfectant, filings don’t lie, and the loudest guy in the room is usually the one with the most to hide.
And, Beetlejuice Boebert claimed she was going to sue him. She never did, so David sued her in Federal Court in Denver and partially won.
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This publication is First Amendment protected speech and commentary on matters of public concern. All individuals referenced are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. No portion of this publication may be used for commercial purposes without the written consent of American Muckrakers PAC, Inc. and David B. Wheeler.