Parker Water election marred by excluded voters

BY HALEY LENA HLENA@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

After the May 2 Parker Water election for three board seats in which it was discovered at the last minute that 62 addresses housing 96 registered voters may not have received ballots, the water district is looking at how to avoid such problems in the future.

“We are also going to complete an audit of all the properties in our district to make sure the Douglas County assessor’s records match ours,” said Ron Redd, district manager of Parker Water and Sanitation District, which hustled to notify overlooked residents that they could cast provisional ballots on the day of the election. “Moving forward, we will develop a process with the assessor to review any inclusions for accuracy once they are recorded by the county.” e Parker Water and Sanitation District serves more than 20,000 businesses and homes, including customers in parts of Castle Pines and Lone Tree. After receiving a phone call over the weekend before the election about not receiving a ballot, the district found there was a pocket of people not paying their Parker Water property taxes. e day before the election — which was held by the Parker Water and Sanitation District on its own with the help of a contractor — the district reached out to the Douglas County assessor. Redd said they later found out there was a mistake made 20 years ago when the 62 addresses located in the southern portion of the Lincoln Creek Village neighborhood, covering about 25% of the residents, were not included by the county in the Parker Water and Sanitation District.

But in the meantime, fourth-place candidate Kory Nelson — who was edged out of a board seat by a margin of just 26 votes behind third-place candidate Merlin Klotz in preliminary results — has not conceded the election, according to a press release.

When asked why this problem is just now coming to light during this election as the initial issue took place 20 years ago, Redd said it was unknown to the district.

“ e list of people that are registered voters comes from the county and the county did not have them in our district,” said Redd. “We didn’t know and they didn’t know. And so the only reason we found out was because one of the residents called us and then we were looking into why she didn’t get (a ballot).”

In a statement, Douglas County Assessor Toby Damisch — who took o ce in January of this year — said:

“On Monday, Parker Water and Sanitation District made the county aware of a concern in their district boundary. As always, the county assessor will work with PWSD to ensure that their district boundary is correct. e geographic boundary in the area of concern has been established in the current manner for nearly 20 years. e assessor’s o ce does not make any abrupt boundary changes without thorough documentation, and any modi cations to the o cial boundaries will be made only after reviewing the appropriate records and legal documents as provided by PWSD.” e morning of the election, the district sent a blast email to a majority of the registered voters in the a ected area, left voice messages for speci c groups of customers and spoke to the Lincoln Creek Village HOA.

Redd noted the water district posted numerous public noti cations about the election a few weeks ago, including in Colorado Community Media newspapers and on the district’s website. Noti cations were also posted to LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Nextdoor on April 11 to notify customers that the ballots were in the mail for the director election.

As there have been election questions raised over the last few years at the national level, the Parker Water and Sanitation District hired a third-party contractor, Community Resource Services, to handle the election process.

After receiving the voter names from the county, Community Resource Services went through all the voter rolls to check for duplicates and then sent the ballots out, according to Redd.

Colorado Community Media reached out to Community Resource Services for comment but have not yet heard back.

“We’re seeing less than 10% of the customers voting,” said Redd. “We have 35,000 registered voters and we have less than, I would say around 8% voting.”

Preliminary results show there were 7,694 votes in the May 2 election, not including all the Uniform and Overseas ballots.

Redd does see concerns regarding the validity of the election, but does not think there is a big issue from a legal point of view because the water district was initially unaware of the problem and then did its best to get information out and urge people to

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“But I hate having hiccups in elections because it creates … people start losing con dence in elections,” said Redd.

Before preliminary results came in, Redd said if it is a close race, he would have to defer to someone who is more familiar with election law, “but it absolutely concerns me.”

Preliminary results show newcomer Robert Kennah took the lead with 1,730 votes. Incumbents Bill Wasserman received 1,589 votes and Merlin Klotz got 1,520, which would mean they are the three winners of board seats. But Kory Nelson was just 26 votes behind Klotz with 1,494, and incumbent Dale Reiman had 1,361. e nal results will be certi ed by May 16 once all uniform and overseas ballots have been counted, according to the district website.

A May 3 press release from Nelson states that due to “signi cant election irregularities” he declines to concede the election.

Nelson said in the press release: “It’s impossible to get an accurate count when an entire subdivision was disenfranchised. e number of registered voters in that area alone is far more than the 26 votes that separate me from the next highest vote getter. Let’s resolve this quickly and make sure that rst everybody gets a fair chance to vote, at least two weeks, and that then every vote is counted.”

“While this is a close race, the election was conducted fairly and followed all legal requirements,” said Redd. “Obviously, we would have preferred that the issue with the voters in Lincoln Creek Village hadn’t happened, but feel con dent that we did what we could legally to alert the impacted voters and make sure they had the opportunity to vote given the circumstances.”

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