Commissioner candidate seeks recount
Mike Potter
Staff Writer
District 2 county commissioner candidate Ron Spunt is fighting to get his name on the Republican primary ballot. He filed a court case seeking an official recount of signatures on his petition. (Photo by Mike Potter/The Flume)
Potential District 2 commissioner candidate Ron Spunt has filed an official recount request in state district court in Fairplay for his petition seeking a place on the Republican primary ballot.
It is unclear when he will know if he was able to obtain enough valid signatures.
Spunt filed a "Petition For A Review Of The Validity Of The Petition Filed For Candidacy On Park County Ballot For County Commissioner For District 2" on June 5 and is asking a judge to do a recount of the signatures on his petition.
Spunt needed a total of 210 valid signatures from Park County Republicans to make it onto the Aug. 12 primary ballot. On June 1, Spunt was informed by the Park County Clerk and Recorder's Office that he only had turned in 201 valid signatures out of 269 total signatures submitted.
In the complaint filed in court, Spunt makes a number of claims. Among them, he states that that Park County Clerk and Recorder Debra Green left him on his own to create a petition to get signatures. He also states that the time it took to get the petition approved exceeded the time allowed under state statute.
"Debra Green took over three working days to Approve a Petition created by myself, a Lay Person, rather than provide to me a Format from which to create a Petition," the document said.
Then Spunt said he lost two more days and a number of signatures when he learned that the petition form validated by the county clerk wasn't actually valid because it was missing a signature line, a date signed line and a physical address line.
Green said Spunt turned in his petition on April 29 at 1:58 p.m. and it was approved before five days.
"We approved his petition on April 29. And then we added the date and approved it on the 30th," Green said. The correction that was made was the inclusion of a date line on the header, she said.
She said the date line was the only thing missing from the petition.
Spunt also said that no one was available in the County Clerk's Office during the week of June 2 to June 6 to answer any questions regarding elections or to give him a copy of his petition so he could look at the signature lines to try and determine why certain names were invalidated.
Green responded by saying she had one person in the office who could answer elections questions during the week: Wanda Stevenson. Other elections officials were in Glenwood Springs attending an elections conference and being trained for HAVA, the Help America Vote Act, which mandates that electronic voting equipment be made available to disabled voters.
Green had a number of conversations with Stevenson while she was in Glennwood Springs for the conference, and if documents could not be located, it wasn't a deliberate attempt to deprive Spunt of any right to see them, she said.
When Spunt couldn't get his questions answered by election officials in Park County, he went down to the Colorado Secretary of State's Office to try and get some answers.
Spunt told The Flume that he was told his petition was locked in a safe and was inaccessible to the public, something Green denies.
"If he talked to Wanda on Tuesday, she probably didn't know where it was filed," she said. "It was here and it's a public record for anyone to look at."
She said it was in a file in a filing cabinet, not locked away.
"The only safe I have is for vital records," she said.
Spunt also said he spoke with Deputy Director of Elections Wayne Munster about the process to file a request for an official recount.
Munster could not be reached for comment.
Spunt is also alleging that he was denied the right to a "cure period" where he could have added valid signatures to his petition if it had been given back to him the day after he turned it in with the number of valid signatures.
He cites Colorado Elections Statute 1-4-603, which states, "Certificates not having the requisite number of names have no effect to nominate candidates, and can only be made valid by the addition of names within the time required by law to make nominations by individuals."
But Green said she was not aware of any such cure period for major party candidates.
"Once you turn the petition in, it's turned in to be verified," she said.
There are cure periods for unaffiliated candidates, she said, citing Colorado Revised Statute 1-4-912.
It states, "In case a petition for nominating an unaffiliated candidate is not sufficient, it may be amended once no later than 3 p.m. on the ninety-fifth day before the general election, 3 p.m. on the fifty-fifth day preceding a congressional vacancy election, or 3 p.m. on the sixty-seventh day before an election that is not being held concurrently with the general election. If a petition for nominating an unaffiliated candidate is amended, the designated election official shall notify the candidate of whether the petition is sufficient or insufficient no later than the ninetieth day before the general election."
The clerk's office had 10 days from May 29 to certify the petition. Green said her election staff came in on a Sunday morning to check signatures because they would be out of the office at an elections conference the following week, and she is confident their work is accurate.
"My staff went above and beyond their call of duty on this petition," she said.
Despite that, Spunt said he isn't done fighting to get his name on the ballot.
He has spoken to the District Attorney's Office in Fairplay, inquired at the Secretary of State's Office, and filed the court case.
Deputy District Attorney Katie O'Brien confirmed that Spunt had spoken to Betty Royse, an investigator in the District Attorney's office in Fairplay, but didn't know any details of any possible investigation.
"I know nothing of the investigation," she said.
County Attorney Lee Phillips prepared a response to Spunt's petition, waiving a number of problems with how the case was filed.
"He has a statutory right to seek that judicial review," Phillips told The Flume.
Phillips' response to Spunt's petition, filed in court on June 6, states, "The position of the Respondent in this matter is simple. If Petitioner's petition contains the 210 valid signatures... his name should appear on the Republican primary ballot..."
The whole process has just strengthened the resolve of Spunt.
The more he has become involved with the political process, he said, the more strongly he feels he can help the county.
And as hard as Spunt is fighting to get on the Republican primary ballot, he said, he will fight even harder for the residents of Park County.
"I'm way too involved to just back away," he said.