Are you wondering how to vote in the upcoming Mesa County General Election? Sweating over where you’ll find the time to research all of the statewide ballot measures, candidates and judges?
Worry no more. We’ve done the work for you.
AnneLandmanBlog has put weeks, in some cases years, into researching the candidates, ballot measures and even the judges, so you don’t have to. Here’s what went into the research:
Colorado State House District 55 is represented by the dark gray area in this map. The candidates for state House Rep. in District 55 are Scott Bielfuss and Janice Rich.
In the November 3 general election, Mesa County residents will vote for who will represent us in Colorado’s state House of Representatives in Denver.
Mesa County’s two state House districts are Districts 54 and 55.
Which district do you live in, and who is running for state House Representative in those districts?
Truck seen on I-70B in Grand Junction September 6, 2020
The body politic in Mesa County used to be in lockstep with the Republican Party, but no more. An increasing number of area residents are proudly displaying signage opposing Trump, and for good reason.
It’s becoming extremely difficult for anyone, even Republicans, to continue supporting the President, especially after the past week.
Anti-Trump garden flag seen in northwest Grand Junction
On September 3, Trump urged North Carolina voters to commit felonies en masse by trying to vote twice.
On September 4, the Trump Administration ordered an end to programs aimed at promoting racial sensitivity among government workers (pdf), calling them “un-American propaganda.”
“Principled”? Tim Foster’s endorsement of anti-science, documented plagiarist Janet Rowland for Mesa County Commissioner. (Screen shot taken from Janet Rowland’s Facebook page on 8/19/20.)
Tim Foster wants to make one thing clear: he is endorsing Janet Rowland for Mesa County Commissioner not in his capacity as longtime President of Colorado Mesa University (CMU), but strictly as an individual.
Well, Okay.
While he certainly has the right as a private citizen to endorse Rowland, doing so nevertheless makes Mesa County residents scratch their heads and wonder why Foster, who everyone knows heads a local university with a Nursing Program, Graduate Nursing Programs and a Physician Assistant program, would endorse an anti-science candidate who actively promotes Q-Anon-based anti-mask disinformation on her social media.
It seems incongruous. Rowland’s posts directly conflict with guidance issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control for controlling the pandemic. All this is going on while CMU is making a monumental effort at a tremendous expense to get students and staff to comply with strict on-campus masking and physical distancing rules to minimize the potential public health threat posed by CMU’s opening the school year with in-person learning amid the deadly Covid-19 pandemic.
Trump mega-donor and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy
In May of 2020, President Trump appointed Louis DeJoy, a Trump mega-donor with no postal experience as Postmaster General of the United States.
After taking office in June, Mr. DeJoy immediately started making changes to the Postal Service that resulted in delayed delivery of mail across the country. His actions included removal of 23 top postal executives, removing high-speed mail sorting machines from post offices around the country and prohibiting employees from logging overtime to deliver mail.
Employees of the Mesa County Clerk’s Elections department haven’t correctly understood what counts as a valid write-in vote, but the misunderstanding was discovered in enough time to correct it before the November general election.
The problem became apparent on July 13, 2020 when write-in candidate for the District 3 County Commissioner seat Bob Prescott, went to the Mesa County Clerk’s Elections Office to ask exactly what constitutes a valid write-in vote.
Prescott asks the clerk “What do you consider a legal vote” for a write-in candidate?
The clerk responds “That’s up to you. It needs to appear just like this, as ‘Bob Prescott.’ If they put in ‘Robert,” it would be rejected.”
Eagle County Treasurer and Public Trustee Teak Simonton (pdf) produced a report to the Colorado Secretary of State (pdf) on August 7 reviewing and making recommendations to improve the operations of the Mesa County Clerk’s Elections Office. The Colorado Department of State hired Simonton as a consultant to observe the Elections Division during the June 30th primary and make recommendations for improvement. Simonton, who has 14 years of experience in administering elections, concluded that while there is a lack of experience among the staff, numerous problems that need fixing and best practices that are not being employed, the Mesa County Clerk’s Elections staff as a whole is a dedicated and capable group of employees.
Her review of the Mesa County Clerk herself, though, was not good.
Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters’ biased comment on the “Transparency in Mesa County” Facebook page.
Embattled Republican Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters expressed contempt for atheists yesterday in a comment on social media, sowing further doubt about whether she can truly conduct her office in an impartial manner.
Here is how the comment came about:
Participants on the public group Facebook page “Transparency in Mesa County” had been discussing the County Clerk’s office after it was found that they forgot to collect and count 574+ ballots from the November, 2019 combined general election.
Mesa County citizens are trying to recall Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters for inept operation of her office, including forgetting 574 ballots in a collection box from the November, 2019 general election.
Embattled Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters (R) has not complied with several Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) requests seeking a copy of a spreadsheet her office created containing the names of the 574+ disenfranchised voters whose ballots her office failed count in the November, 2019 general election.
The ballots were left in a collection box after the election and were not retrieved or counted. Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold called the oversight a “serious dereliction of duty.”
Several former Clerk’s office employees report that Ms. Peters asked Sandra Brown, another Clerk’s Office employee, to create a spreadsheet of the names of all the voters whose ballots weren’t counted so Ms. Peters could send them each a written apology.
Internal emails from the County Clerk’s office support claims that the list in fact exists. In the emails, Peters asks other employees not to distract Ms. Brown from the task of creating the list, so she could finish it quickly.
Colorado State Senator Ray Scott
What do you know about State Senator Ray Scott, who is currently a candidate for Mesa County Commissioner?
One question people have about Scott is, if he is already a state senator and his term doesn’t expire until 2022, why is he running for county commissioner? Why doesn’t he want to finish his term in the State Senate?
The answer?
Scott makes $30,000/year and a $45/day per diem as a state senator.
As a county commissioner, he would more than triple his salary. The salary for a county commissioner is now $92,681, not including benefits and perks, like insurance, use of vehicles, etc. — more than three times the average salary in Mesa County.
Customers at the Mesa County Clerk’s office have found sealed ballots blowing across the parking lot, run after them, picked them up and taken them into the Clerk’s office to be counted, according to the latest story in today’s Daily Sentinel on the epic string of failures by the Mesa County Clerk’s office.
On May 20, 2020, Republican Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters issued a press release announcing her office was installing a brand new, “convenient, 24 hour secure drive-up ballot drop box” in the Clerk’s parking lot, saying she is “focused on the safety and security of mail ballot returns, especially in this pandemic…”
But the box is proving difficult for voters to use, especially in the windy weeks we’ve had recently, resulting in ballots not being fully inserted into the box and hence flying in the wind.
Internal county email about Tina Peters’ public relations project, paid for with taxpayer funds
Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters used taxpayer funds to pay for a professional PR campaign promoting herself and her running of the Clerk’s office to counter the recall effort ongoing against her. The PR project comes during a time when the county is financially strapped due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and at a time when local governments are talking about layoffs. And she’s doing it during regular work hours and on taxpayer time, too.
Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters (R) is facing a recall election due to gross incompetence and failure to carry out her duties. (Photo: YouTube)
Eagle County Treasurer Teak Simonton has approved the wording of the petition submitted by the RecallClerkTina campaign to recall Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters (R), allowing the recall effort to move to the signature-gathering phase.
The Mesa County Commissioners approved Simonton to serve as the designated election official to oversee the recall effort, since by law Peters can’t oversee her own recall effort.
Wondering how to vote in the upcoming primary election on Tuesday, June 30, 2020?
Following are AnneLandmanBlog’s recommendations for how to vote on the Mesa County Democratic Primary Ballot. Wherever candidates are running unopposed, VOTE FOR THEM. They are Democrats.
Given the difficult mess our country is in now, especially at the federal level and local levels after years of Republican domination, it’s crucial for the country to change direction by electing Democrats to every office from top to bottom this year.
Here are the recommendations:
@MesaCountyClerk Peters says in today's @DailySentinelGJ that she "has been getting calls all weekend about how outraged #MesaCounty citizens are" that people are trying to recall her. I'm a Mesa County citizen who's THRILLED for the recall. I like my ballots COUNTED! #ByeTina
— Anne Landman (@AnneLandman) June 2, 2020
Kathryn Bedell, DVM, of Fruita, running against Ray Scott for County Commissioner, District 1
Don’t want Cody Davis or Ray Scott as Mesa County Commissioner?
Well now you finally have a better option.
Mesa County voters finally have a real candidate running for District 1 County Commissioner.
Educated, intelligent, well-informed, fiercely pro-agriculture and pro local-economy, Dr. Bedell is the best candidate so far for County Commissioner District 1.
Did you vote in the primary only to see your top candidate drop out before the votes were even counted?
Maddening, isn’t it?
And how many times have you seen a candidate “win” an election who got less than a third of the total vote count? Who wants a candidate holding office that two thirds of the electorate didn’t even want in office?
These situations make the case for ranked-choice voting, a fairer system of voting that is increasingly being used across the country.
And it’s no wonder.
Tina Peters’ own qualification to be County Clerk were that she was a retired flight attendant who had worked for a construction business for a number of years and home-schooled her kids. [Photo: Facebook]
All these vacant positions must put the Clerk’s office in a pretty dire situation, considering that it’s fully staffed at 32 employees.
You’d think the Clerk would be scrambling to hire qualified people to fill these open positions, especially in an election year, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.
The Job Openings web page for Mesa County lists vacancies in the Clerk’s office for Customer Service, Motor Vehicle and Elections Managers. Some of these positions have been unfilled for months.
But it doesn’t seem to be due to a lack of qualified applicants.
