Vol. II, No. 154 From Our Region to Yours
Politics

Gabe Evans Wants a Recount of the Race He Lost by More Than 30,000 Votes

The Colorado Republican trails Democrat Manny Rutinel by about 13 points in the 8th District. Colorado's automatic recount kicks in at about 600.

By 2 min read

A gray Remington adding machine with cream-colored number keys and large plus and minus keys sits on a dark wooden table in front of its worn orange and tan cardboard box, which reads "Another Remington" above a drawing of the same machine and the word "Adding."
A Remington adding machine. Recounts in Colorado are done with more modern equipment, which is expected to reach the same total. Photo: Issac I Navarro / CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

BRIGHTON, Colo. — Rep. Gabe Evans would like the votes counted again. He would also like them to come out differently.

The Associated Press called Colorado’s 8th District for Democrat Manny Rutinel at 9:49 p.m. Tuesday, The Colorado Sun reported. Evans, a first-term Republican, did not concede.

Rutinel led 54.5 percent to 41.6 percent with about 91 percent of the expected vote counted, according to NBC News on Thursday morning. Libertarian Dave Wood had 3.8 percent.

As of early Wednesday, the gap was 32,919 votes, the Rocky Mountain Voice reported.

The request

Evans told Colorado Public Radio that he wanted a recount, The Center Square reported.

He had set the tone at his watch party in Brighton around 9 p.m. Tuesday. “We are going to fight till the very end, until every single vote is counted,” he said, according to The Colorado Sun.

“We know that there’s some ground to make up,” he added.

There is. It is roughly the size of a mid-sized Colorado town.

The math

Colorado recounts a race automatically when the margin is one-half of 1 percent of the winner’s vote or less. Half a percent of Rutinel’s 124,631 votes on Wednesday’s count is 623.

Evans is about 32,300 votes past the line. The recount would have to find them.

“The congressman is not disputing the count,” said a senior Republican aide known to this bureau only as Deep Throat Lozenge. “He is disputing the result of the count. Those are different departments.”

The district

The 8th has not been gentle with anyone. The 2022 and 2024 races were each decided by about 2,500 votes and took days to settle, The Colorado Sun reported.

This was the first time since the district was drawn in 2021 that a winner was known on election night. Evans is treating it as the first time someone made a mistake.

Not every Colorado Republican took that route. Mark Baisley, who lost the Senate race to John Hickenlooper by 25 points, called Hickenlooper to concede, The Center Square reported.

Rutinel, for his part, addressed Evans’ voters directly. “I will be your congressman as much as anyone’s,” he said, according to CBS Colorado.

Evans remains in office until January. The ballots remain the same.

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