Serving the community since 1903
WEEK OF OCTOBER 31, 2024
VOLUME 121 | ISSUE 44
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ROARING AND RUMBLING Historic steam engine rumbles through Brighton P2
Balancing right to vote with ballot security County election officials rely on DMV data, the ‘death list’ to make sure ballots safe BY CAITLYN KIM CPR NEWS
quickly. It aerates the water, which is good forage and spawning habitat for native fish. “So that’s going to be the biggest feature, a constructed ripple. Also, we going to add boulder clusters,” he said. “They are large boulders placed in the river. Those also provide good habitat for fish. They create little pools and good cover for the fish.” “Then the last thing we’ll do is add large woody debris, such as cottonwood trees, which we’ll use from the tree area here at Veterans Park,” he said. “We’ll put those in the river, it provides really good cover for the fish and also for macroinvertebrates and all of the things that diversify the habitat.”
As the election draws nearer, Coloradans have a lot of questions around voting — about how the process works, and also, what protections are there to ensure ineligible people aren’t casting ballots. It’s a perennial concern in every election, but one that has heated up this year, that somehow large numbers of non-citizens — and the dead — will manage to cast ballots. Weld County Clerk and Recorder Carly Koppes has been fielding versions of these fears since she first started working in the office in 2004. The Republican, who was first elected Clerk in 2014, is on her 6th presidential cycle. Despite no widespread evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 election, an NPR poll shows a majority are concerned that there will be fraud this time around, in large part due to former President Donald Trump’s statements. A majority in that survey said they believe noncitizens will be able to vote in the upcoming presidential election. The checks to ensure only eligible voters end up on the voter rolls start with the first question asked of anyone registering to vote in Colorado. “On the form it says, ‘Are you a citizen of the United State? Yes or No?” Koppes said, pointing to a printed copy of Colorado’s official voter registration form. Next to the question, the document says, “if you answered No, do not complete this form.” “So, it’s a self-affirmation. We are hoping that you are answering that question correctly,” Koppes explained. But “when we start registering you to vote in the voter registration system, we do verify and check.” Clerks and the Secretary of State’s office rely on a long list of databases to ensure their voter lists are clean, something even the right wing Heritage Foundation agrees Colorado does a good job on; it ranked the state third in the nation for accuracy of voter registration lists. When it comes to preventing non-citizens in particular from voting, the verification process starts with two other pieces of information on that form – your drivers’ license
SEE HABITAT, P9
SEE SECURITY, P5
Work at Brighton’s Veterans Park seeks to improve water quality, fish habitat along South Platte BY BELEN WARD BWARD@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
Metro Water Recovery’s water quality scientists will begin work at Brighton’s Veterans Park along the South Platte River in an effort to restore the river’s diminishing native fish populations. Jim Dorsch, Metro Water Recovery’s senior water quality manager, said the Aquatic Life Habitat Improvement project will start the first week of November and should finish the river work by January 2025 at the latest. “The original project started with an issue with dissolved oxygen, and over the years, we did a number of studies regarding fish and what the level of oxygen they need. Then we did a study in 2006 that looked at the holistic view of
the South Platte between Denver and Fort Lupton,” Dorsch said. Dorsch said they studied fish habitat, not only water quality, comparing what they found in that study to the habitat of those fish typically. That shows that the fish population lacked a healthyt habitat. “We agreed to come in and do six phases of fish improvements for the habitat, and we are finally at phase five, which is the actual last phase for constructing the habitat,” Dorsch said. “Phase six is ongoing monitoring that we’ll continue to do into the future.” Dorsch said the physical habitat of the native fish in the Veterans Park River is limited. The plan is to add a constructed ripple, a shallow river area where the water moves a little more
VOICES: 8 | OBITUARIES: 9 | CULTURE: 10
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