Lauren Boebert Is Preparing for Recount as New Votes Threaten Her Election

As mail-in ballots remain to be counted, Colorado Republican Representative Lauren Boebert is preparing for a recount in a tighter-than-expected contest to defend her seat.

In a message to supporters last week, Boebert called on her backers to contribute additional funds to her campaign as the possibility remains for Democratic challenger Adam Frisch to close the gap in the final anticipated ballot drop on Wednesday.

"I told you all year, the Left would do everything that they possibly could to get rid of me," Boebert wrote. "As this race comes down to every last vote, I need you to help us ensure we have the resources to finish what we started!"

With several thousand ballots outstanding, the possibility of an upset is very real.

One week after Election Day, Boebert leads Frisch by just 1,122 votes in a district Republicans were favored to win by roughly 8 points under newly drawn district lines. And with the race too close to call as of Tuesday, Frisch has already begun preparing for the possibility of victory, even attending Congress' nonpartisan orientation session for newly elected members on Monday.

"I am not going to get over my skis," Frisch said in a statement to reporters earlier this week. "Our county clerks and bipartisan poll watching teams are taking great care with counting every vote, and we must be patient as we allow this process to play out. That said, I am honored to attend on behalf of the people of Colorado's 3rd District."

"It is in the best interest of the district for me to attend new member orientation given the closeness of this race, which could be unsettled for another month," he added.

Both Boebert and Frisch have already begun preparing for the process of "curing" ballots that might have had issues and been initially rejected by county clerks. However, the calculus for a Boebert victory looks to be increasingly dim as she awaits the result of those ballots.

While the Republican congresswoman and close ally of former President Donald Trump once won her district by about 6 points, she is now inching closer to the half-percentage point margin that would initiate an automatic recount of the vote under Colorado law—a sign a significant amount of independent voters flocked to Frisch's corner this cycle. Some believe that the ballots remaining to be cured are likely to fall in Frisch's favor, while mail-in ballots have traditionally benefited Democratic candidates over Republicans.

"Unaffiliated voters wanted to punish the hell out of the Republican Party in Colorado this year," Matt Crane, the Republican executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, told Colorado Newsline. "And they sure did....It's probably a better pool for Democrats to go and try to cure unaffiliated ballots than it is for Republicans."

Frisch also told liberal YouTube show host Brian Tyler Cohen on Monday there are still anywhere between 500 and 550 overseas ballots that have yet to be counted alongside a trove of about 1,500 ballots that were "shuffling" around the state that statistics show are likely to play in Frisch's favor.

However, Frisch said he doubts there will be any significant indication of who is actually winning the race until "next Thursday or Friday" as county clerks await the arrival of outstanding ballots that remain in the field. At this point, it's all up to assumptions—especially after Boebert lost her home county.

"It's a little bit hard," Frisch said Monday. "I mean on one level there's this assumption that the overseas ballots normally lean Democratic—that's what a lot of Democrats think at least....There's those that think cured ballots are usually younger voters because they're not as experienced in actually filling out a ballot, which would possibly help us as well."

"But we really don't know," he added. "You know, our district has 27 counties. We have some of the most blue counties in the country, and we have some of the most red counties in the country. From what we know, there's no geographical understanding of those ballots, so it's a little bit of a mystery about what's actually going to come out of there."