Is anyone really that surprised that we’re having so many voting problems in Denver? The problem has gotten so bad that the Democratic Party is filing an injunction to keep the polls open in Denver for another two hours past 7:00 p.m. because of long lines, shoddy voting machines and general incompetence by the Denver Election Commission to prepare for this.

What bothers me more than anything about this is that we knew it was coming. I wrote back in September that we could have big voting problems in Denver, as did others in the media, yet nobody really took the warnings seriously. Now, if enough Denver voters get fed up and decide to just go home (or if their ballots aren’t correctly counted) we could see the results of several races turn 180 degrees on this one part of Colorado.

I wrote back in September that Bill Ritter could lose the race for governor if voter turnout in Denver is low, but now it looks like Ritter is too far ahead of Republican Bob Beauprez for a problem like this to cost him the election. But Democrats Cary Kennedy (state treasurer) and Ken Gordon (secretary of state) have virtually no chance of winning their respective races if these problems continue; bBoth races are going to come down to the wire, and if their biggest base of Democratic voters – Denver – doesn’t perform well, then Kennedy and Gordon are sunk.

Ditto for Referendum I and the No on Amendment 43 campaign. Denver is the epicenter of potential YES votes for Referendum I and potential NO votes for Amendment 43, and if Denver voting problems aren’t corrected, the gay rights folks are not going to get the results they want on these two ballot measures.

It’s a shame that several races could be won or lost because Denver can’t figure out a decent way for people to vote. It shouldn’t be this way, and we knew it was coming.