{"id":15804,"date":"2025-11-05T03:58:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T10:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/update-early-votes-for-montezuma-county-show-cemetery-and-water-district-ballots-losing\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T21:51:56","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:51:56","slug":"update-early-votes-for-montezuma-county-show-cemetery-and-water-district-ballots-losing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/update-early-votes-for-montezuma-county-show-cemetery-and-water-district-ballots-losing\/","title":{"rendered":"Update: Early votes for Montezuma County show cemetery and water district ballots losing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=d3263fc1-b484-5ff8-adae-add8d5a6e105&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"1280\" height=\"960\" alt=\"A voter pulls up in a car to submit his ballot about an hour before the 7 p.m. deadline Tuesday evening at a drop box behind the Montezuma County Clerk and Recorder\u2019s Office. (Benjamin Rubin\/The Journal)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">A voter pulls up in a car to submit his ballot about an hour before the 7 p.m. deadline Tuesday evening at a drop box behind the Montezuma County Clerk and Recorder\u2019s Office. (Benjamin Rubin\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p>The unofficial report from the Colorado Secretary of State shows that 8,300 total ballots were cast in Montezuma County\u2019s 2025 Coordinated Election as of 6:18 p.m. Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Voters rejected two local ballot measures concerning the Cortez Cemetery and Montezuma County Water District No. 1, according to the latest round of results.<\/p>\n<p>59.05% of voters opposed a proposed property tax increase to fund the Cortez Cemetery under Ballot Issue 6A, early unofficial results show. The measure would have generated more than $90,000 annually for the cemetery.<\/p>\n<p>Ballot Issue 6B was also rejected, with 71.33% of voters opposing an uncapped property tax limit to reduce fees for Montezuma County Water District No. 1.<\/p>\n<p>As a result, a property tax cap of 5.25% will remain in place, allowing the district to \u201ccollect, retain, and spend all revenues received, including taxes, grants, loans, and other sources, as a voter-approved revenue change exempt from TABOR and other legal limits.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At about five minutes before the 7 p.m. Election Day deadline, judges were gathering ballots from a drop-off box behind the Montezuma County Clerk and Recorder\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n<p>A final handful of last-minute voters pulled up in cars to hand ballots to the judges and drive away.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy wife will be very glad I dropped her ballot off,\u201d said Dave Edwards, one of the final night\u2019s voters.<\/p>\n<p><em id=\"emphasis-d7e8a0a3cd1be408b844f5c6c4b152e4\">This is a developing story that will be updated as more election results become available.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>8,300 total votes counted, or 40% of registered voters as of 6:18 p.m. Wednesday evening<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15805,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-15804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15804"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19851,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15804\/revisions\/19851"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15804"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=15804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}