{"id":37515,"date":"2022-11-03T13:05:31","date_gmt":"2022-11-03T19:05:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/police-investigate-after-2022-ballot-with-suspicious-substance-is-found-in-adams-county\/"},"modified":"2022-11-03T19:05:31","modified_gmt":"2022-11-03T19:05:31","slug":"police-investigate-after-2022-ballot-with-suspicious-substance-is-found-in-adams-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/police-investigate-after-2022-ballot-with-suspicious-substance-is-found-in-adams-county\/","title":{"rendered":"Police investigate after 2022 ballot with suspicious substance is found in Adams County"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Voters
Voters drop off ballots on June 28, 2022, at Westminster Motor Vehicle in Adams County. (Olivia Sun\/The Colorado Sun via Report for America)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

A suspicious substance was found Wednesday in a 2022 ballot envelope submitted in Adams County, prompting an investigation by elections officials and law enforcement.<\/p>\n

Initial testing indicated the substance is not toxic, said Adams County Clerk Josh Zygielbaum, but it will take as many as five days before officials know for sure if the substance is benign.<\/p>\n

A \u201cfairly significant\u201d amount of the substance was found coming from the envelope, Zygielbaum told reporters at a news conference Thursday. The substance was described to The Fort Lupton Press as a white power.<\/p>\n

Some cooking substances were found in the powder, according to Zygielbaum, along with an unknown chemical.<\/p>\n

The ballot has not been fully opened, he said.<\/p>\n

The county will process the ballot if it\u2019s deemed safe. If the substance is toxic or otherwise unsafe, the county will mark the ballot damaged and may issue a replacement ballot to the voter, who was not identified.<\/p>\n

Coloradans maintain the right to vote unless incarcerated on a felony conviction.<\/p>\n

The ballot was received at one of Adams County\u2019s drop boxes. One of the county\u2019s ballot security teams contacted law enforcement upon discovering the suspicious substance.<\/p>\n

Zygielbaum, a Democrat, and Matt Crane, who leads the Colorado County Clerks Association, said no similar situations have happened in other Colorado counties.<\/p>\n

The discovery of the substance comes as elections officials across Colorado are on high alert given conspiracy-fueled threats.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe public needs to know that everyone is safe,\u201d Zygielbaum said Thursday. \u201cThe election is secure and they can and should feel comfortable voting. Our security processes are firmly in place and worked well to detect and secure this ballot.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cWe will not allow an incident like this to disrupt our election anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more at The Colorado Sun<\/div>\n

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to covering Colorado issues. To learn more, go to coloradosun.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Authorities say it will take as long as five days before they are confident the ballot can be safely handled <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37516,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[233,266,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-37515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coloradosun-com","tag-election","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37515","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=37515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37515"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=37515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}