{"id":28900,"date":"2024-03-03T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-04T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/will-votes-for-trump-count-in-colorados-upcoming-presidential-primary\/"},"modified":"2024-03-04T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-03-04T00:00:00","slug":"will-votes-for-trump-count-in-colorados-upcoming-presidential-primary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/will-votes-for-trump-count-in-colorados-upcoming-presidential-primary\/","title":{"rendered":"Will votes for Trump count in Colorado\u2019s upcoming presidential primary?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Former
Former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally, Saturday, Dec. 16, 2023, in Durham, N.H. (AP Photo\/Reba Saldanha)<\/span>Reba Saldanha<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe are in a limbo situation where we don\u2019t know if the U.S. Supreme Court will decide,\u201d said Grantham, who until recently was also president of the Colorado County Clerks Association. \u201cThe question before us right now is \u2018Will they order us to suppress the vote for the outcome of President Trump, if he is not eligible to be an elected candidate?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s name does currently appear on Colorado\u2019s primary ballot. On Feb. 8, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments about whether or not the former President is ineligible to run for president again because he engaged in an insurrection to try and stay in power after losing the 2020 presidential election. The Colorado State Supreme Court ruled in December that Trump should be disqualified from appearing on the state\u2019s primary ballot.<\/p>\n

While the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court were skeptical of the Colorado judges\u2019 arguments to disqualify Trump, an opinion has not yet been issued. And it\u2019s left those in charge of administering next week\u2019s primary election with a lot of questions.<\/p>\n

Grantham said the plan is to \u201cgo ahead and count\u201d the Trump votes. But he worries about what will happen if the Court then issues a decision saying Trump is ineligible.<\/p>\n

Grantham said if that happens, he plans to tell his county\u2019s voters everywhere he can that he and his election judges have \u201ctaken an oath to uphold the Constitution, which includes decisions that come from the U.S. Supreme Court.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would have been helpful for the United States Supreme Court to issue a decision before Coloradans received their mail ballots honestly,\u201d said Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, \u201cand before the majority of voting starts happening, but we\u2019re past that point from the administrative point of view.\u201d<\/p>\n

The guidance from the state is that Trump remains an eligible candidate. \u201cAssuming the Supreme Court does not issue a decision [that disqualifies Trump] before Super Tuesday, the votes will be counted for Donald Trump,\u201d Griswold said, adding her office hasn\u2019t received many questions about this.<\/p>\n

She points out that the Colorado State Supreme Court decision was put on hold while there is an appeal. \u201cThe clerks know where we\u2019re at in this litigation, (and) that they\u2019ll count the ballots unless something changes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, she would have liked the decision before ballots had gone out, to give Colorado voters certainty, as well as voters in other states. A state judge in Illinois disqualified Trump from the ballot recently, Griswold pointed out. Other states, like Maine and New York, have paused proceedings in cases in their states on this issue and are waiting for the Supreme Court\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n

But other Colorado leaders also understand why the court may be taking its time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this is a case that will be thought of for a century and I think they want to get it right and I think a rush to judgment in a case like this could set some really bad precedents,\u201d said GOP Rep. Ken Buck, an attorney. \u201cI don\u2019t criticize them for just taking their time.\u201d<\/p>\n

He points out that people are \u201cgoing to vote for who they want to vote for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fremont County\u2019s Grantham stressed the primary election is not to elect a president, but to award delegates to a candidate. \u201cThis is just a preference poll to tell the delegates from the state convention that go to the national convention of who to vote for.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Grantham has another message to primary voters: this is an unprecedented situation, don\u2019t take it out on poll workers or elections staff, who have experienced an uptick in threats since the 2020 elections.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf people are angry with [the Court\u2019s] decision, don\u2019t take it out on those that are volunteering to run the election \u2013 those staff and those election directors across the state \u2013 they\u2019re upholding their oaths to the constitution, following the law,\u201d Grantham said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally, Saturday, Dec. 16, 2023, in Durham, N.H. (AP Photo\/Reba Saldanha)Reba Saldanha \u201cWe are in a limbo situation where we don\u2019t know if the U.S. Supreme Court will decide,\u201d said Grantham, who until recently was also president of the Colorado County Clerks Association. \u201cThe question before us […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[120,1137,28,265],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-28900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines","tag-politics"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28900","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=28900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28900"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=28900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}