SD-26 race within 54 votes; No results until at least Nov. 17

The Senate District 26 race won't be decided until at least Nov. 17, as the Arapahoe County Clerk and Recorder's office seeks to reach 800 voters who sent in mail-in ballots without identification, according to Democratic nominee Linda Newell.

The Clerk and Recorder's office has 10 days to reach the voters by mail and phone to verify they cast their ballot, Newell said; only after that will approximately 4,000 provisional ballots be counted, she said.

But those 800 voters are county-wide, Newell said, so not all of them may have voted in the Senate District 26 race.

As it stands, Newell is 54 votes ahead of Republican Lauri Clapp, with a little more than 58,000 votes cast. With the exception of one precinct in Jefferson County, all of Senate District 26 is in Arapahoe County.

If the victory margin is within 0.5 percent of the total number of ballots cast after all the votes have been counted, Arapahoe County will initiate a county-wide recount, Newell said. With the current vote totals, plus the 800 mail-in ballots and about 4,000 provisional ballots, that 0.5 percent threshold would be approximately 314 votes.

If a recount is performed, results won't be in until after Thanksgiving, Newell said.

"We're hoping that we increase our lead strong enough so that the spread is beyond the threshold of the half-a-percent," Newell said.

Until the race is decided, Newell will act as if she's a state senator: she participated in Thursday's Senate Democratic Caucus and will attend new member orientation Thursday and Friday.

"I just have to forget about it and just keep moving on," Newell said. "I can't put my life on hold any more."

Clapp did not immediately return an email seeking comment early Thursday evening.