Lauren Boebert is about to lose her seat in Congress. Instead of waiting for the count, her campaign has started hinting that the count is the problem.

On Thursday night, with Democrat Eileen Laubacher ahead in Colorado's 4th District, the Boebert campaign put out a statement from its lawyer, Scott Gessler. "We are investigating some very unusual voting patterns," he said, "and expect this election to head to a recount, one way or another." Newsweek printed the statement in full, and noted the part that matters most: Gessler did not say what the "unusual voting patterns" were.

As of Friday morning, Laubacher led 48.75% to 47.94%, with 97% of the vote in. That is a lead of 3,069 votes, according to The New Republic — more than three times the 921-vote margin that would set off an automatic recount.

What "unusual" actually looks like

There is a plain explanation for why Boebert is behind, and it came from a Republican election official, not a Democrat.

On Thursday, Weld County's Republican clerk, Carly Koppes, told 9News reporter Kyle Clark that her county was done counting its votes in the race, apart from ballots still being fixed by voters and ballots arriving from other counties. Weld leans Republican. It turned in far fewer votes in the race than expected. Clark's read, as Newsweek reported it: the ballots still left were mostly in counties Laubacher has won, and Boebert's path to a comeback "just got very difficult."

That is the whole mystery. A Republican county ran out of votes, and the votes that remain are in places that went for her opponent. Nobody has to invent a pattern to explain it.

Gessler's own statement even admits how the count has gone. "Since election night, ballot returns have been trending in Congresswoman Boebert's direction, consistently lowering the margin under one percentage point," he said. So the count was moving toward Boebert, and the campaign still says it's suspicious. It hasn't said which part.

The man making the claim

Gessler is not a random campaign lawyer. He is an election-law attorney and a former Colorado secretary of state, the official who runs the state's elections. He knows how Colorado counts ballots, and he knows that the state lets a losing candidate ask for a recount and pay for it. Newsweek walked through the rule: a candidate who loses by more than the automatic margin can request one in writing between 10 and 22 days after the election, and has to cover the cost.

That's the legal path, and it's open to Boebert. Talking about "very unusual voting patterns" while naming none is something different. It plants a doubt that the campaign doesn't have to prove.

Colorado's Republican Party had a better idea. Its chair, Craig Steiner, told Republican voters on Friday to fix any problems with their ballots. "Every cured ballot matters in a race this close," he said, as The New Republic reported. That is how you try to win a close race: by getting every one of your voters counted, not by casting suspicion on everyone else's.

Boebert has done this before

Boebert's record on accepting election results is already written down.

Hours after the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, she voted to throw out the votes of two states. She was one of 121 House members who voted to reject Arizona's electors that night, and, after midnight, one of 138 who voted to reject Pennsylvania's. Both objections failed. On the morning of January 6, she had tweeted "Today is 1776," and as rioters moved through the building she posted the lockdown in real time.

She has also stood by the election deniers who broke the law. Tina Peters, the former Mesa County clerk, was convicted for breaking into her county's voting machines to try to prove false claims of fraud in the 2020 election, and went to prison. When Trump vetoed Boebert's own bill to bring clean water to southeastern Colorado, Boebert said she'd been told Peters was the reason, and defended him anyway.

When she was the one barely ahead

The best measure of a claim like Gessler's is what the same side said when the numbers ran the other way.

In 2022, Boebert beat Democrat Adam Frisch by just 546 votes. That was close enough to force an automatic recount. The recount changed four votes in total and confirmed her win.

Frisch didn't hint at strange patterns. He conceded before the recount was done, saying it was unlikely to change the result in his favor. "I honor and accept the certified results of the Colorado Secretary of State and wholeheartedly affirm the sanctity of Colorado elections," he said once it was over.

Colorado counted those ballots under the same state law that is counting these. Boebert trusted the system when it gave her a 546-vote win. Now she's behind by 3,069 votes, and her campaign says something looks unusual.

She isn't the only one

Boebert's campaign is one of several Republican campaigns this week trying to cast doubt on a count they're losing. In Mississippi, Cindy Hyde-Smith's lawyers told all 82 counties to set affidavit ballots apart while she trailed. In Alaska, Trump said the state should hand Dan Sullivan other candidates' votes and call the race, and we found no statement from Sullivan rejecting the idea.

What the record shows

Lauren Boebert trails Eileen Laubacher by 3,069 votes with 97% counted, more than three times the margin that would trigger an automatic recount. Her campaign's lawyer, a former Colorado secretary of state, says the team is "investigating some very unusual voting patterns" and has not said what any of them are, while a Republican county clerk's own count explains why Boebert fell behind. When Boebert won by 546 votes in 2022, the recount moved four votes and her opponent conceded without questioning the result.

Source

Lauren Boebert Cries Election Fraud as She Trails Behind Democrat — The New Republic, November 6, 2026