{"id":2440697,"date":"2019-02-18T02:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-18T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=298896"},"modified":"2019-02-18T02:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T09:00:00","slug":"ballots-sent-to-underage-voters-in-city-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/ballots-sent-to-underage-voters-in-city-election\/","title":{"rendered":"Ballots sent to underage voters in city election"},"content":{"rendered":"

For 57 Aspen teenagers who have received mail-in ballots, their vote won’t count in the March 5 election<\/a>, but at least they exercised their non-right to participate in democracy.<\/p>\n

Personnel from the Pitkin County Clerk and Recorder’s Office, which is the custodian of voter registration information, sent the city of Aspen a list that contained the names of 16- and 17- year-old registered voters but didn’t specify their ages.<\/p>\n

It is legal for those at that age to register as voters, but not to vote. There is a push by a group called Inspire Colorado<\/a> to get teenagers pre-registered to vote in an effort to get better turnout.<\/p>\n

They are classified under “confidential voters,” who are mostly individuals who pay $5 to have their names removed from public reports so they don’t get contacted by candidates or canvassers.<\/p>\n

There are 203 confidential voters in Pitkin County and 76 are in the city. Of those, 52 are underage to vote.<\/p>\n

Deputy City Clerk Nicole Henning requested the names of Aspen registered voters via a spreadsheet to use to print the ballots before they were mailed out.<\/p>\n

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The list included confidential voters but the underage names were not filtered before they were given to the city.<\/p>\n

Henning said she received an angry voicemail Thursday from a parent who wanted to know why her 16-year-old received a ballot.<\/p>\n

County Clerk Janice Vos Caudill said her office received the same complaint.<\/p>\n

She told The Aspen Times on Friday that her staff didn’t ask what the city was using the list for and that’s why the underage names were not removed.<\/p>\n

“Should we have asked? Yes,” Vos Caudill said. “We feel bad.”<\/p>\n

Henning said she specifically told county staffers that the voter list request was for the printer to print the ballots for the March 5 election.<\/p>\n

Ballots were mailed out Feb. 11 and are now trickling into the City Clerk’s Office. Henning said about 40 ballots have been returned.<\/p>\n

City Attorney Jim True said the city is sending letters to the underage voters who received ballots explaining the error.<\/p>\n

He added that Aspen City Council also will be advised of the situation.<\/p>\n

Henning said the names of the underage voters are in the city’s database and when and if their ballots come in, they will be flagged and removed from the count.<\/p>\n

csackariason@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For 57 Aspen teenagers who have received mail-in ballots, their vote won’t count in the March 5 election, but at least they exercised their non-right to participate in democracy. Personnel from the Pitkin County Clerk and Recorder’s Office, which is the custodian of voter registration information, sent the city of Aspen a list that contained […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2440697","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 00:37:10","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2440697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2440697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2440697\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2440697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2440697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2440697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}