Voters in four Colorado counties who live outside the Front Range Passenger Rail District received the Proposition 7A tax question on their ballots this week, in an error confirmed by the Colorado Secretary of State's office.

Residents of Adams, Arapahoe, Douglas and Weld counties who are not part of the rail district are seeing Ballot Issue 7A on their ballots even though they are not eligible to vote on it. 9News first reported the error. The Secretary of State's office said it does not yet know how the mistake occurred or how many ineligible voters received the question.

Jack Todd, a spokesperson for the Secretary of State's office, said in an email that the elections department will help the affected counties ensure that "only eligible voters have their vote in this contest counted." Clerks in the four counties and a spokesperson for the campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

What does Proposition 7A fund?

The measure asks 2.4 million voters in roughly 30 communities across 13 counties to approve a 0.333% sales tax increase — about 33 cents on a $100 purchase — to pay for expanded passenger rail service along the Front Range. The tax applies to purchases made inside the district and to online purchases by district residents.

The revenue projection is $295 million annually. The proposition also authorizes the Front Range Passenger Rail District to sell $580 million in bonds.

The funding would build out a service recently branded the Colorado Connector, or CoCo — a daily regional train connecting communities along the Front Range, with a stop as far south as Pueblo. Communities within the district include Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Sterling Ranch, Littleton, Denver, Westminster, Broomfield, Louisville, Boulder, Longmont, Loveland and Fort Collins.

What service exists today?

Limited passenger service is already planned. A Denver–Fort Collins route with three daily round trips is scheduled to launch in 2029. Proposition 7A would fund more frequent service on top of that baseline.

How was the district drawn?

The current boundaries reflect a legislative decision earlier this year, when state lawmakers trimmed many parts of the Front Range counties that originally formed the tax district at its creation in 2021. The district now includes municipalities and special districts where at least 20% of the population lives within five miles of a planned train station.

The ballot error touches on the practical consequence of those redrawn lines: county-level election administration must now distinguish between residents inside and outside a district that no longer follows county borders. Until the Secretary of State's office and the four county clerks determine the scope of the error, the number of ballots affected — and the cost of correcting them — remains unknown.