Six days.
Laubacher 185,923.
Boebert 182,686.
Mangeris 12,605.
That’s 381,214 ballots and a 3,237-vote lead, 0.85 points, off version 386061 of the Secretary of State’s feed.
The Weekend
152 votes came in since yesterday. All out of Arapahoe. 105 Laubacher, 40 Boebert, 7 Mangeris. Laubacher lead up another 65.
Don’t read anything into the slow day. It’s Sunday. Colorado county election offices don’t sit around posting results on the weekend. Douglas hasn’t budged since Thursday, Larimer since Friday, and both of them still have ballots sitting there. They go back to work Monday.
Here’s what the week actually tells you. Laubacher’s lead has not gone down one time. Not one batch since Wednesday night. Six days of that.
What’s Left Out There?
Call it 11,100 ballots. About 85% of those sit in Douglas, Larimer and Arapahoe, and Laubacher is carrying all three. Weld finished Thursday. El Paso Friday.
Run what’s left at the splits those counties have actually been producing, not what anybody wishes they’d produce, and they net Laubacher another 477.
The Recount Line
Automatic recount in Colorado kicks in when the margin falls inside 0.5% of the leader’s total. For this race, as it stands now, that’s 930 votes.
Admiral Laubacher is up 3,237.
So the free recount isn’t happening. And to actually win the seat Boebert needs roughly 65% of the two-candidate ballots left, a 30-point margin, out of three counties she’s losing by double digits. BeetleJuice’s best county in the entire district was Weld at 62%. Weld closed four days ago. (Remember all of the undervotes against her? The Weld Clerk estimated that at 2,500.)
The math isn’t close. It stopped being close Thursday.
BeetleJuice Boebert trying to shut me up. The hearing is November 16.
Her campaign is out there talking recounts. Her lawyers are in a Colorado courtroom asking a judge to put a restraining order on 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. Hearing is November 16. Eight days.
The legal defense fund is short. Every dollar goes to the lawyers fighting this one. If you don’t think a member of Congress gets to use a protection order to shut down coverage of her own conduct, this is where you help.
DONATE TO THE LEGAL DEFENSE FUND
Please donate today. Thank you.
Four Days, Zero Filings
Thursday night Scott Gessler, her campaign lawyer and a former Republican Secretary of State, told reporters the campaign was “investigating some very unusual voting patterns” and expected this “to head to a recount, one way or another.”
Four days on. No county named. No precinct. No batch. No recount request filed, no complaint filed, nothing filed anywhere by anybody. Colorado Politics asked him to explain himself and got no answer. Not a single clerk in this district has reported an irregularity. Neither has the Secretary of State.
They did get the claim into Democracy Docket, which covers election law nationally. The allegation is traveling a lot further than the proof.
And while I’m at it: “Eileen Laubacher Defeats Lauren Boebert in Colorado’s 4th District” is trending on X right now. That’s an auto-generated trend headline, not a call. AP hasn’t called this race. NBC hasn’t. Nobody has. Don’t pass it around like it’s a source.
Where This Election Lands
Push the leftovers through at county splits and you get about:
191,500 for Laubacher
187,800 for Boebert
12,970 for Mangeris.
Turnout near 392,300
Roughly 87% of what 2024 did.
Final margin somewhere around 3,700, range 2,900 to 4,400.
Cure and provisional ballots run through November 12 and aren’t in that.
What a Recount Would Cost BeetleJuice Boebert
Colorado makes the loser pay for a requested recount, in certified funds, up front, before anybody re-runs a ballot. She hasn’t filed for one and she hasn’t set up a recount fund. Checked the FEC Sunday: her only committee is still Lauren Boebert for Congress, no new Colorado committee has registered since Election Day, and her last filing of any kind was October 31.
Three other candidates around the country have already stood up recount funds since November 1. She hasn’t. What she does have is $274,161.88 in the bank and no debt, per her October 22 report.
The actual price gets set by the 21 county clerks and published by the Secretary of State no later than November 27, so nobody has a real number yet. But the state posted its prices the last time this happened. Statewide recounts in 2022 ran about $256,000 across 64 counties, roughly $4,000 a county, and the two statewide races that week differed by $260 despite different ballot counts, which tells you Colorado prices this by county and staffing, not by ballot. Twenty-one counties puts CD-4 somewhere around $100,000 to $175,000. Call it half her cash on hand, paid to machine-rescan the same scanners under a rule written during Scott Gessler’s own term as Secretary of State, chasing a 3,237-vote gap in a process that moved exactly four votes the last time her own race went through one.
And, interestingly, I have an interest in what happens with this recount. As you may know, she filed a restraining order against me for reporting on her. In return, we filed an anti-SLAPP motion against her. My motion essentially asks the judge to treat her restraining order as a political act to restrict my 1st Amendment rights as an American and journalist. The SLAPP act also requires Boebert to pay my legal fees if I win our motion. We are going to win that motion based upon the law.
My Running Tab
Thursday I said the final margin would be about 2,700. Friday I moved it to 3,900. Saturday, 3,500. Today, 3,700.
I keep moving it because the inputs keep moving. What hasn’t moved in six days is which direction this thing is going.
Counties are back at it Monday. I’ll run the numbers again.
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.
Paid for by American Muckrakers PAC II (americanmuckrakers.com). Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. Donations made to American Muckrakers, Inc. are not deductible for federal or state tax purposes.
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.
Can’t wait to see/hear Admiral Laubacher interrogate Hegseth.
Hmmm…she has enough in her campaign account to pay off Kimberly Guilfoyle’s AmEx bill. Maybe they can team up and run a new and different grift as a duo.