{"id":91805,"date":"2019-11-08T01:01:49","date_gmt":"2019-11-08T01:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/la-plata-county-voter-turnout-spiked-tuesday\/"},"modified":"2019-11-08T01:01:49","modified_gmt":"2019-11-08T01:01:49","slug":"la-plata-county-voter-turnout-spiked-tuesday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/la-plata-county-voter-turnout-spiked-tuesday\/","title":{"rendered":"La Plata County voter turnout spiked Tuesday"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"La
La Plata County voter turnout was 38%, much higher than it was in 2017, the last comparable election.<\/span>Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Tax increases, sports betting and school board races spurred far more La Plata County residents to cast ballots in this year\u2019s election than in 2017 \u2013 the last comparable election, said Clerk and Recorder Tiffany Parker.<\/p>\n

Parker said 38% of voters participated, or 17,000 of the 44,678 eligible electors. In the last comparable election in 2017, 26% of eligible voters participated.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am ecstatic about the turnout,\u201d Parker said.<\/p>\n

The Clerk\u2019s Office saw an \u201camazing\u201d amount of foot traffic Tuesday, when 4,689 voters \u2013 about 27% of all voters \u2013 cast ballots, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was pretty exceptional there for a little while,\u201d Parker said.<\/p>\n

The higher number of ballot questions on Tuesday\u2019s ballot compared with 2017 likely drove interest in the election, she said. For example, the 2017 ballot didn\u2019t have a statewide question or any question involving Ignacio.<\/p>\n

The most recent ballot featured two statewide questions, school board races and tax increases for libraries and the Animas Mosquito Control District.<\/p>\n

The statewide propositions especially interested voters, Parker said.<\/p>\n

Proposition CC would have allowed the state to keep the tax revenue it collects to be used for education and transportation and no longer issue refunds to voters. The measure failed. Proposition DD would have legalized sports betting in Colorado and tax it for water conservation. The question passed narrowly, 50.73% to 49.27%.<\/p>\n

Durango water engineer Steve Harris, who helped shape the state water plan, sees a need for the funding Proposition DD could provide Southwest Colorado. Funding for water projects has been hurt by a decline in oil and gas revenue.<\/p>\n

\u201cDD would get us back to the income or the funding available when severance tax was pretty good,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Proposition DD asked voters to authorize taxes to increase by as much as $29 million annually.<\/p>\n

One Southwest Colorado water project in need of funding is Red Mesa Reservoir. The reservoir southwest of Durango needs millions in investment to pay to enlarge the spillway and possibly raise the dam, farmer Trent Taylor said.<\/p>\n

Taylor described the new funding as a \u201cvoluntary tax\u201d that will benefit water projects, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom my perspective, that\u2019s pretty critical,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Campaigns for and against Proposition CC were high profile across Colorado. But the messages might have been confusing to voters because campaigns for the measure claimed it wasn\u2019t a tax increase, while campaigns against it said it would have increased taxes, said Jean Aaro, president of the League of Women Voters of La Plata County.<\/p>\n

La Plata County Republican Center Committee Chairman Travis Oliger said he wasn\u2019t surprised the proposition failed because it is consistent with the state\u2019s fiscally conservative patterns.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe elect people, their solutions are generally to raise taxes, and then we turn around and say \u2018no,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The failure of the question might be evidence of a distrust of government, he said.<\/p>\n

La Plata County Democrats Chairwoman Carol Cure said turnout might have been hurt by the complexities of the state ballot questions. She was disappointed by the vote on Proposition CC.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to do a better job investing in our children, our schools, our roads,\u201d Cure said.<\/p>\n

Aaro also said improved voter education could help drive turnout and give more people the confidence to vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard, I think, to take your time and weed through what it all means,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

mshinn@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

and DD may have driven interest<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":91806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5764,5767,5736,5735,5768],"tags":[266,2425,1264],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-91805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-election","category-league-of-women-voters","category-local-news","category-news","category-property-tax","tag-election","tag-league-of-women-voters","tag-property-tax"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91805","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=91805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91805"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=91805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}