A Colorado judge on Tuesday ruled that Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters (R), a supporter of former president Donald Trump who has embraced election-fraud conspiracy theories, is barred from overseeing elections in her home county because of her indictment for allegedly tampering with voting equipment. Peters, who is running for the GOP nomination for secretary of state in Colorado, had already been prohibited by a judge from overseeing last year’s local elections. Mesa County District Judge Valerie Robison ruled on a lawsuit brought this year by Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D) that called for Peters and deputy Belinda Knisley to be barred from overseeing this year’s midterm elections and the upcoming Mesa County primary. The embattled clerk is facing multiple investigations, and 10 felony and misdemeanor counts from a grand jury indictment, stemming from allegations of election equipment security breach and campaign finance violations. Knisley was also indicted by the grand jury and suspended from her county position last year. “Based on the circumstances of this case … the Court determines that the Petitioners have met the burden of showing that Peters and Knisley have committed a neglect of duty and are unable to perform the duties of the Mesa County Designated Election Official,” Robison wrote in her ruling.
Colorado passes election security bill inspired by clerk accused of tampering | Benjamin Freed/StateScoop
Legislators in Colorado on Tuesday passed a bill aimed at stopping insider threats against election administration, particularly the technology used to process and certify ballots. The bill, which passed with bipartisan support, makes several changes to how county election offices safeguard and provide access to their systems, including requiring continuous video surveillance of all voting systems components, and installing key-card access to rooms where equipment is kept. It also prohibits the unauthorized copying of ballot-machine hard drives, and makes it a felony to tamper with voting systems, publish devices’ passwords online or give unauthorized individuals access to any election equipment. The legislation, which now goes to Gov. Jared Polis’ desk, was inspired directly by the case of Tina Peters, the clerk and recorder of votes in Mesa County who is currently under indictment for several of those exact offenses. Peters, who has openly embraced lies promoted by former President Donald Trump and others about the 2020 election, was accused last year of allowing an unauthorized individual to observe a secure software update on her county’s ballot-processing machines, and letting that person make copies of hard drives and passwords, images of which were displayed a few months later at a conspiracy-theorist conference hosted by pillow manufacturer Mike Lindell. Full Article: Colorado passes election security bill inspired by clerk accused of tamperingColorado: Adams County clerk wears bulletproof vest due to increase in threats | Pattrik Perez/The Denver Channel
Following the 2020 presidential election, Adams County's top elections official says he's had to adopt additional security measures because of threats from conspiracy theorists. "When I left the Marine Corps, I thought that was the last time that I was going to be wearing body armor," said Adams County Clerk and Recorder Josh Zygielbaum. "And here I am again, almost 15 years later and not as nearly as good a shape as I was then, but, you know, still wearing body armor." As first reported by ABC News, Zygielbaum says the decision to wear a bulletproof vest was made because of increasing threats, both direct and indirect, from election deniers, which concerns him and his staff. "I think the worst one that we've received was somebody telling us that they would see us on a battlefield and they would walk away from it," Zygielbaum said. Some of the security improvements he's implementing include a remodel to his elections office, which will better protect his employees from the public once complete. Full Article: Adams County clerk wears bulletproof vest due to increase in threatsColorado judge orders Elbert County Clerk to turn over copies of voting hard drives | Coleen Sleven/Associated Press
A judge has ordered a county clerk who copied his voting system’s hard drives to turn over his copies to Colorado’s secretary of state by the end of the day Wednesday. Secretary of State Jena Griswold sued to force Elbert County Clerk Dallas Schroeder to turn over the external hard drives containing the copies and Judge Gary M. Kramer ruled late Friday that Schroeder must follow her lawful orders. Kramer also ordered Schroeder to answer Griswold’s questions about who has had access to the copies in filings. It’s one of a handful of cases across the United States in which authorities are investigating whether local officials directed or aided in suspected security breaches at their own election offices. Some of them have expressed doubt about the results of the 2020 presidential election. Schroeder’s lawyer, John Case, declined to comment on the order Monday. Schroeder has said he copied the hard drives because he wanted to preserve the results of the 2020 election. He first made a copy of the hard drives of the election server, the image cast central computers and the adjudication computer before the state updated voting software. He then made a copy of that set of copies.
Full Article: Judge orders clerk to turn over copies of voting hard drives | AP NewsColorado county clerks reassure voters while watching for cyberattacks | Jessica Gibbs/Centennial Citizen
While local counties' clerks and recorders say they are still taking steps to unravel false claims of widespread election fraud two years after the 2020 presidential election and ahead of the June primaries, they are also on the lookout for potential cyberattacks after warnings from President Joe Biden that such attacks are increasingly likely. “It’s definitely nerve-wracking, but something that we are starting to get used to,” Adams County Clerk and Recorder Josh Zygielbaum said. “It’s the world we live in now, and we do everything we can to protect the system and to protect ourselves and our workers and our voters.” The cybersecurity threat level is similar to past elections, or the worst-case scenarios election offices have prepared for, metro area clerks said. “There is no question right now, every agency is indicating that the risk of Russian initiated cyber security threats has increased,” Jefferson County Clerk and Recorder George Stern said. But Stern said “long before we had internal threats to our elections,” cybersecurity and the security of election from foreign interference “has been top of mind,” Stern said. Regular probes from countries including Russia, Iran, North Korea and others are directed toward state and local election offices, looking for vulnerability in the system. Clerks said their offices partner with homeland security, the FBI, and state and local departments to monitor cyberthreats. Full Article: County clerks reassure voters while watching for cyberattacks | Centennialcitizen.netColorado: New election tool provides transparency to voting ballots | Angeline McCall/9news
A new online tool allows the public to access thousands of ballots in three different counties – El Paso and Pueblo counties piloted the program after the 2020 election to provide more transparency – Weld County launched the program shortly thereafter. The Ballot Image Audit Tool is available to anyone online after creating a username and password. In Weld County, the tool allows people all of the 64,000 ballots cast in the 2020 election. The goal of the tool is to allow people to see every ballot cast and how the ballot corresponds with the way it was recorded by the ballot machine. It also shows which ballot and choices were adjudicated, meaning which ones were looked at by the human eye because the machine could not clearly decipher them. "It’s all out there for the public to go and see, so that they can make sure and gain confidence in the elections," said Republican Weld County Clerk Carly Kappes, who continues to receive questions over the legitimacy of the election results. Kappes said she has been able to point people to the tool to verify the results themselves, which she hopes will help them to verify their concerns. "It has been something that I have had people go and look at," said Weld. "I can stand here all day. I can have those conversations with people that have the questions, but really at the end of the day, I want to provide them the tools for them to verify what I am saying."
Full Article: Public can look at election ballots with new online tool | 9news.com
Colorado lawmakers advance bill to protect elections workers | James Anderson/Associated Press
A Colorado legislative panel advanced a bill Thursday to add protections for elections workers after hearing disturbing testimony about escalating threats that have prompted many to quit or take security training so they feel safe in their public-service work. State and local elections officials told the House State, Civic, Military, & Veterans Affairs Committee that their workers, from municipal front-office staff to county clerks to the state’s highest-ranking elections officials, have experienced an escalation of threats since the 2020 presidential election. The threats — delivered by email, phone, or by the posting on social media of home addresses of workers and their family members — have left some local authorities confronting staff shortages ahead of Colorado’s June primaries and the November midterms. The threats have also prompted some workers to wear bulletproof vests to and from work around elections time and add active-shooter training to routine elections training in several counties, said the bill’s sponsors and several county clerks. Colorado’s elections workers “have truly faced unprecedented threats, especially over the past two years, simply for doing their jobs,” said Democratic Rep. Emily Sirota, a bill sponsor.
Full Article: Colorado lawmakers advance bill to protect elections workers | AP NewsColorado County Clerks Association vow to defend democracy against election deniers | Ella Cobb/Daily Camera
Boulder County Clerk and Recorder Molly Fitzpatrick wants Colorado voters to know that thousands of dead people did not vote in the 2020 election. This rumor was one of several that Fitzpatrick and other Colorado county clerks refuted during a news conference hosted by the Colorado County Clerks association on Sunday outside the Denver Elections Division in Denver, where Republican, Democratic and unaffiliated clerks gathered to address allegations of election fraud put forth by election deniers and conspiracy theorists. In the past two years, election conspiracists have targeted Colorado clerks, citing fraud and security issues within Colorado’s election systems. Some of these false claims have ranged from accusations that China hacked Colorado’s voter registration database to reports claiming that Colorado’s voting systems are not properly certified. Fitzpatrick sought to set the record straight. “Unfortunately, over the last several months, there have been claims from election deniers that purport to prove fraudulent elections in Colorado,” Fitzpatrick said. “These claims are often lengthy, and they’re often full of jargon, and they do not provide proof or data. They consistently demonstrate a lack of understanding of our process. Full Article: Colorado County Clerks Association vow to defend democracy against election deniersColorado lawmakers advance bill to protect elections workers | James Anderson/Associated Press
A Colorado legislative panel advanced a bill Thursday to add protections for elections workers after hearing disturbing testimony about escalating threats that have prompted many to quit or take security training so they feel safe in their public-service work. State and local elections officials told the House State, Civic, Military, & Veterans Affairs Committee that their workers, from municipal front-office staff to county clerks to the state’s highest-ranking elections officials, have experienced an escalation of threats since the 2020 presidential election. The threats — delivered by email, phone, or by the posting on social media of home addresses of workers and their family members — have left some local authorities confronting staff shortages ahead of Colorado’s June primaries and the November midterms. The threats have also prompted some workers to wear bulletproof vests to and from work around elections time and add active-shooter training to routine elections training in several counties, said the bill’s sponsors and several county clerks. Colorado’s elections workers “have truly faced unprecedented threats, especially over the past two years, simply for doing their jobs,” said Democratic Rep. Emily Sirota, a bill sponsor.
Colorado; Supporters of Tina Peters are going after other Colorado clerks. Here’s what they want. | Saja Hindi/Denver Post
For an hour and a half, El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Chuck Broerman met with a small group of people that showed up at his office to talk about what they insisted were deep-rooted security and fraud problems within Colorado’s election systems. Problems that Broerman, a Republican, and other election officials have repeatedly said don’t exist. Among the visitors was 2020 election denier Shawn Smith of an effort called the U.S. Election Integrity Plan — a group that claims election irregularities and fraud in the 2020 elections in Colorado. One of their requests to Broerman during the meeting in May: give access to the county voting equipment and allow a third party to conduct “a forensic audit.” Broerman declined, but he described to them in detail the redundant systems of election security measures to show why elections in his county are secure and reliable. The clerk said Smith, of Colorado Springs, then responded, “Clerk Broerman, we will either do this with you or through you.” “I took that as a threat that if I didn’t do that, that there would be repercussions for not doing what they wanted me to do,” he said. That wasn’t the last Broerman heard from this group or others. He, like other local elections officials across the country, have been facing increased pressure from people trying to cast doubt on the integrity of U.S. elections using unfounded claims of election fraud, spreading the lie that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Full Article: Colorado county clerks defend against voter fraud claimsColorado: Rio Blanco County Commissioners vote 2-1 to defund election equipment | Lucas Turner/Rio Blanco Herald Times
Rio Blanco County Commissioners voted 2-1 this week in favor of defunding Dominion-based vote tabulation machines in the Clerk and Recorder’s office. If implemented, the move would require election officials to hand-count all votes in future elections. The decision came following back-and-forth comments by current/former election officials (who spoke against the measure) and RBC residents who questioned the security of dominion machines (who spoke in favor). “Adoption of this measure will cause chaos in the clerk and recorder’s office during the 2022 election cycle, and will expose RBC to serious liability and litigation,” said County Clerk Boots Campbell Tuesday. She voiced strong opposition to the measure, and pushed back on claims of fraud, miscounts and other alleged discrepancies in the county’s election verification process. She emphasized the matter would wind up before the Deputy Secretary of State, and noted that even if it goes through (following a required public hearing) it will not impact tabulation systems of this year’s elections. Full Article: Commissioners vote 2-1 to defund election equipment | Rio Blanco Herald Times | Serving Meeker, Rangely, Dinosaur & Northwest ColoradoColorado: Democratic bill targets ‘insider’ threats to state’s election system | Bente Birkeland/Colorado Public Radio
Eight months after Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters allegedly compromised her county’s election machines while searching for proof of fraud in the 2020 election, Colorado’s Democratic lawmakers want to make it illegal for those who run elections to do much of what she’s accused of. A new bill would ban anyone overseeing elections from knowingly or recklessly making false statements about the process. It also adds more training requirements for election staff and officials, bars counties from copying voting machine hard drives without state permission, mandates full-time video monitoring of equipment and increases penalties for security breaches. Supporters believe Colorado is the first state to try this approach to prevent insider threats and disinformation from further eroding public trust in elections, even as others raise concerns about potential First Amendment violations and question the motives behind the entire effort. “I don’t think it's too much to ask to say, ‘if you’re running our elections you can’t lie about our elections’,” said Democratic Senate President Steve Fenberg who is the main sponsor of SB22-153. While the measure had been in the works for a while, it was officially introduced just two days after Peters was charged with breaching the security of her county’s voting equipment. In the words of the grand jury’s indictment, Peters and her deputy Belinda Knisley allegedly “devised and executed a deceptive scheme” to give an unauthorized person access to the county's voting machine hard drives and to sit in on a software update. Photos of passwords and copies of data were later leaked online by election conspiracy theorists. Full Article: Democratic bill targets ‘insider’ threats to Colorado’s election system | Colorado Public RadioColorado clerk is indicted for election tampering and misconduct | Bente Birkeland/NPR
A grand jury has indicted a Colorado county clerk, Tina Peters, and her deputy on a laundry list of charges related to an election security breach in her office last summer that was influenced by former President Donald Trump's false claims that he won the 2020 election. The charges against Peters come as election workers around the U.S. face death threats amid a national disinformation campaign that has falsely alleged wide-scale election tampering in 2020. Peters' case is particularly worrisome to many who run elections as a sign that insiders might act upon those conspiracy theories, further undermining confidence in the voting process. Peters, who's the county clerk and recorder in Mesa County, in western Colorado, faces 10 counts, including seven felony charges and three misdemeanors. The felony charges include attempting to influence a public servant, identity theft, criminal impersonation and conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation. The misdemeanors include first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty and failure to comply with the requirements of the secretary of state. Her deputy, Belinda Knisley, has been indicted on six counts, including attempt to influence a public servant, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, violation of duty and failure to comply with the requirements of the secretary of state. Full Article: Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters indicted for election tampering : NPRColorado: Election conspiracy groups target county clerks, seeking access to voting equipment | Saja Hindi/The Denver Post
For an hour and a half, El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Chuck Broerman met with a small group of people that showed up at his office to talk about what they insisted were deep-rooted security and fraud problems within Colorado’s election systems. Problems that Broerman, a Republican, and other election officials have repeatedly said don’t exist. Among the visitors was 2020 election denier Shawn Smith of an effort called the U.S. Election Integrity Plan — a group that claims election irregularities and fraud in the 2020 elections in Colorado. One of their requests to Broerman during the meeting in May: give access to the county voting equipment and allow a third party to conduct “a forensic audit.” Broerman declined, but he described to them in detail the redundant systems of election security measures to show why elections in his county are secure and reliable. The clerk said Smith, of Colorado Springs, then responded, “Clerk Broerman, we will either do this with you or through you.” “I took that as a threat that if I didn’t do that, that there would be repercussions for not doing what they wanted me to do,” he said. That wasn’t the last Broerman heard from this group or others. He, like other local elections officials across the country, have been facing increased pressure from people trying to cast doubt on the integrity of U.S. elections using unfounded claims of election fraud, spreading the lie that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Full Article: Colorado county clerks defend against voter fraud claimsColorado election officials continue to face threats as lawmakers pursue new protections | Scott Franz/KUNC
Election workers in Adams County are putting on bulletproof vests before they head to the office. More than 150 miles away in Salida, the clerks in the Chaffee County clerk and recorder's office now talk to residents through bulletproof glass and walls. “It's like it's so beyond the pale, the craziness,” Chaffee County Clerk Lori Mitchell said last week after describing the range of threats and misinformation she and her staff are still facing following the 2020 election. “I think that's why it's hard to combat back because it's like, ‘Oh my God, what the heck is going on?’” Mitchell said the threats against her office started on social media. They also targeted a worker at a ballot processing machine company that has been the focus of unfounded claims of fraud. “We did all the proper channels of reporting (the threats) to the sheriff and to the FBI and whatever we had to do,” she said. “But it still was very unnerving for me and my family.” Things got worse last summer. Mitchell was driving about a block away from her office in Salida, a small town on the banks of the Arkansas River surrounded by sprawling ranches and mountains. She said she noticed something alarming. Full Article: Colorado election officials continue to face threats as lawmakers pursue new protections | KUNCColorado elections clerk is sued after passing on voting data | and Alexandra Ulmer/Reuters
A Colorado elections clerk was sued on Thursday after he copied data from voting machines with the help of two men with ties to groups supporting the false conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was stolen from former Republican President Donald Trump. Dallas Schroeder, who oversees elections in Elbert County, east of Denver, was sued by Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold for making two copies of his county's voting system hard drives and then handing the images to "unauthorized people", according to the lawsuit. In the civil lawsuit, filed in Elbert County District Court, Griswold demands that Schroeder return the copies and hand over the device he used to make them. Schroeder did not immediately respond to a Reuters email for comment. Schroeder is the second Colorado elections clerk to come under scrutiny for allegedly breaching voting systems as part of an "election integrity" effort by Trump supporters who falsely claim the 2020 election was marred by fraud. Suspected breaches are under investigation in other states, including in Michigan, where authorities last week said an unnamed third party had been given unauthorized access to a county voting system. In August, the FBI opened an investigation into a suspected security breach of voting equipment in Mesa County in western Colorado. Griswold, a Democrat, has accused Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters of facilitating that breach.
Full Article: Colorado elections clerk is sued after passing on voting data | ReutersColorado: Douglas County clerk questioned by state about allegedly copying election equipment hard drives | Bente Birkeland/Colorado Public Radio
Colorado’s Democratic secretary of state Jena Griswold is requesting more information about a potential election security breach by Douglas County’s Republican clerk and recorder Merlin Klotz. This makes Klotz the third GOP election official in Colorado under investigation for their alleged handling of sensitive election technology. Griswold said her office became aware of a social media post from last October in which Klotz wrote, “we, as always, took a full image backup of our server before a trusted build was done this year.” The trusted build is a regular process every county goes through after an election, in which the makers of its election equipment update the operating system. Douglas is one of two counties in the state whose equipment is supplied by a company called Clear Ballot. The rest of Colorado uses technology from Dominion Voting Systems, based in Denver. A false election conspiracy circulated by supporters of former president Trump claims that Dominion used their machines to subvert the 2020 election, and then hid the evidence during the routine software update. Klotz’s social media post did not suggest that he believes Clear Ballot was involved in election fraud but has concerns about Dominion's trusted builds. Full Article: Douglas County clerk questioned by state about allegedly copying election equipment hard drives | Colorado Public RadioColorado: A second county election official is accused of a security breach | Saja Hindi/Denver Post
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s office is investigating a second county clerk over a possible elections security breach and has ordered Elbert County Clerk and Recorder Dallas Schroeder to turn over information related to allegations that he copied a voting system hard drive. The Democratic secretary of state ordered the Republican county clerk to appear at a deposition Feb. 7 to explain how the copy of the 2021 Dominion Voting Systems hard drive was made after Griswold’s office said Schroeder did not respond to an email request and an election order requiring the disclosure of information about the “potential security protocol breach.” She also asked that video surveillance of voting equipment be turned on and that no one access the voting equipment unaccompanied. “As Secretary of State, my top priority is to ensure that every eligible Coloradan – Republican, Democrat, and Independent, alike – has access to secure elections and I will always protect Colorado’s election infrastructure,” Griswold said in a statement. The secretary of state’s office said it doesn’t believe the “unauthorized imaging has created an imminent or direct security risk to Colorado’s elections” because of when it took place. This is not the first time the secretary of state’s office has launched an investigation over copies of election equipment hard drives. Last year, Griswold’s office sued Republican Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters over allegations of a security breach, resulting in a judge barring Peters from overseeing the 2021 election, and the secretary of state’s office is also trying to stop Peters from overseeing the 2022 election. Peters is still facing multiple lawsuits, ethics investigations and a grand jury investigation of a possible elections breach in her office. Schroeder is part of a lawsuit against Griswold’s office calling for an “independent forensic audit” of the 2020 election, a common refrain for those pushing baseless claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. As part of the filings, the secretary of state’s office said Schroeder signed an affidavit, dated Jan. 7, which states that he “made a forensic image of everything on the election server, and I saved the image to a secure external hard drive that is kept under lock and key in the Elbert County elections office” before the “trusted build” process took place. The “trusted build” is a routine update against vulnerabilities, according to the secretary of state’s office. Full Article: A second county election official in Colorado is accused of a security breachColorado secretary of state files lawsuit to block Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters from overseeing the 2022 election | Jesse Paul/Colorado Sun
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold on Tuesday filed a lawsuit seeking to block Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters from having any oversight role in the 2022 election. The lawsuit comes after Peters, a Republican, refused last week to comply with a list of election security terms from Griswold, a Democrat, ahead of the November contest. The terms included that Peters be accompanied when near any of her county’s voting equipment and that she retract statements in which she “indicated a willingness to compromise Mesa County’s voting system equipment.” “Every eligible Coloradan – Republican, Democrat, and Independent alike – has the right to make their voice heard in safe and secure elections,” Griswold said in a written statement Tuesday. “As Clerk Peters is unwilling to commit to following election security protocols, I am taking action to ensure that Mesa County voters have the elections they deserve.”
Source: Jena Griswold sues to block Tina Peters from 2022 election oversight roleColorado: Mesa County grand jury will investigate allegations of official misconduct, tampering with election equipment | Stephanie Butzer and Blair Miller/Denver Channel
A Mesa County grand jury will investigate the allegations of official misconduct and tampering with county election equipment amid an ongoing investigation into accusations that an elections clerk was involved in a security breach of the equipment in 2021. The 21st Judicial District Attorney's Office made the announcement early Thursday morning. The county made national headlines in 2021 after security information from the county’s voting machines was leaked to a right wing website. According to the investigation as of late December, investigators say Mesa’s Clerk and Recorder, Republican Tina Peters, let an unauthorized person access the voting machines. That person was also present for a secure software system update. In the announcement Thursday morning, Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said the grand jury investigation will be "thorough and guided by the facts and the law." Their statement did not name anybody in particular. Full Article: Mesa County grand jury will investigate allegations of official misconduct, tampering with election equipmentColorado: Mesa County drops lawsuit against Tina Peters over voting services contract | Sara Wilson/The Durango Herald
Mesa County will no longer pursue a lawsuit against Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters after she attested to county commissioner documents. The original lawsuit, filed on Dec. 21, alleged that Peters neglected her duty as clerk by failing to attest to legal action the county’s commissioners took to extend a contract with Runbeck Election Services, as first reported by The Daily Sentinel. The company will print ballots and envelopes for the 2022 primary and general elections. Though Peters was stripped of her status to run elections in the county for the 2021 coordinated election, her duties as clerk still involve attesting to documents signed by the board. The deadline to attest to the voting services contract was Dec. 20, which Peters missed. That prompted the lawsuit. “Peters finally did attest to the Runbeck contract on Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021, a week after all other documents were attested, one day after the given deadline and several hours after the county filed the lawsuit with the court,” Mesa County attorney Todd Starr wrote in a statement. It was necessary to expedite the contract with Runbeck because of a possible shortage of ballot envelopes and inserts next year, county officials said.
Full Article: Mesa County drops lawsuit against Tina Peters over voting services contract – The Durango HeraldColorado Secretary of State asks judge to dismiss ‘baseless’ GOP election-denier lawsuit | Chase Woodruff/Colorado Newsline
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold has asked a judge to throw out a lawsuit filed by six Republican elected officials seeking to launch a third-party “audit” of the 2020 election, part of a broader effort to spread baseless conspiracy theories about widespread voter fraud and seize control of state elections. Griswold’s response, submitted on Monday, moves to dismiss all three claims for relief made by the lawsuit against her, which was filed last month by a group of GOP officials led by state Rep. Ron Hanks, a Penrose lawmaker and 2022 candidate for U.S. Senate. “My office is requesting the judge dismiss this baseless lawsuit,” Griswold said in a statement. “The plaintiffs’ allegations are patently false, and their legal justifications without merit. Nationwide, bad actors are abusing the judicial process to spread disinformation, undermine confidence in elections, and suppress the right to vote. It is extremely concerning to see elected officials here in Colorado spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.” Hanks’ lawsuit raises a series of objections to the secretary of state’s election procedures, including Griswold’s adoption of emergency rules prohibiting what she called “sham election audits” like the one that took place earlier this year in Arizona. That effort, conducted by Florida-based firm Cyber Ninjas at the request of GOP lawmakers, has been widely criticized as undermining confidence in the state’s election system while uncovering no credible evidence of fraud. Full Article: Griswold asks judge to dismiss 'baseless' GOP election-denier lawsuit - Colorado NewslineColorado: Election denialism and far-right activism sit firmly within the GOP mainstream | Alex Burness/The Denver Post
Conservative activist Joe Oltmann of FEC United, a Colorado group with an active and armed citizen defense wing, called this week for his “traitor” political opponents to be hanged. “(T)wo inches off the ground, so they choke to death,” Oltmann said on his podcast, emphasizing to his co-host that he meant this literally. Those remarks have been met with silence from Republican leaders who say they’d rather not pay attention to that sort of rhetoric. They say it doesn’t represent the party and that voters in the state don’t want to discuss the sorts of extreme ideas Oltmann, a prominent voice in favor of the unproven claim that the 2020 election was rigged in Democrats’ favor, espouses on a regular basis. Average voters “actually are talking about education and crime and how expensive it is to live in Colorado,” state Republican Party chair Kristi Burton Brown told The Denver Post on Wednesday. As much as she and many other GOP leaders interviewed this month by The Post say they would like to distance themselves from FEC United, the ties between it and the conservative mainstream of Colorado are substantial. A lot of what Oltmann represents — chiefly election denial and the fervent belief that the country is besieged by treasonous Democrats and phony Republicans — is popular among the conservative base. And it figures to be a potentially major factor in 2022 elections here and around the country. Full Article: Election denialism and far-right activism sit firmly within the Colorado GOP mainstreamColorado’s top elections official seeks security protection | Associated Press
Colorado’s Democratic secretary of state is asking lawmakers for $200,000 annually for guards and other security-related measures after receiving escalating threats over her advocacy of elections security. Jena Griswold has consistently debunked claims, both locally and on national media, that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. She’s also sued a Republican county clerk in western Colorado who is under federal investigation for allegedly breaching security protocols involving voting machines and has become a leading elections conspiracy figure popular with the right. With the online threats escalating, Griswold’s office is seeking $200,000 annually from the Legislature to “address election-related concerns” from the threats. The funds would pay for a vendor to track threats on social media and for guards for Griswold and some staff at public events, The Colorado Sun reported Wednesday. Griswold and local elections officials across the country have faced escalating harassment and threats in the aftermath of the 2020 election, which then-President Donald Trump and supporters contend was stolen by Democrat Joe Biden. No evidence of tampering has been found, and a flurry of lawsuits by Trump and his supporters challenging the result were tossed out of court.
Full Article: Colorado’s top elections official seeks security protection | AP NewsSecond Colorado county clerk joins Hanks lawsuit seeking 2020 election ‘audit’ | Colorado Newsline
A second Colorado county clerk signed on to a lawsuit filed by state Rep. Ron Hanks against Secretary of State Jena Griswold as part of an effort to conduct a third-party “audit” of the 2020 election in the state. Elbert County Clerk Dallas Schroeder was added as a plaintiff in the lawsuit in an amended complaint entered a day after the initial complaint was filed in Denver District Court on Nov. 18. The lawsuit claims that election system software used in Colorado’s 64 counties in 2020 was improperly certified, that the secretary of state’s office illegally destroyed election records, and that Griswold exceeded her authority when in the summer she adopted emergency rules to prevent the kind of election audit then occurring in Arizona, which she deemed illegitimate. Also named as plaintiffs are Merlin Klotz, the Douglas County clerk and recorder; two of the three Rio Blanco County commissioners, Gary Moyer and Jeff Rector; and Park County Commissioner Amy Mitchell. Claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent or compromised have been debunked by experts, courts and election officials from both parties. When asked Monday about his motivation for joining the lawsuit, Schroeder said, “I’m not going to be speaking to the news media about that. We’ll have a website up shortly that will explain what’s going on.” Schroeder in August told Newsline that after the November 2020 election, he started fielding calls about election integrity from citizens, and to demonstrate that constituents could have confidence in the results his office conducted a hand recount of the vote in Elbert. The recount proved the results were correct. Full Article: Second Colorado county clerk joins Hanks lawsuit seeking 2020 election 'audit' - Colorado NewslineColorado: FBI Raids Home of Election Official Accused of QAnon Leak | Tom Porter/Business Insider
The FBI on Tuesday raided the home of a Colorado elections official accused of leaking election machine data that later appeared on a site linked to the QAnon conspiracy theory movement. Federal, state, and local law enforcement officials were involved in searching the home of Tina Peters, the former Mesa County Clerk, as well as the homes of three of her associates, the Mesa County District Attorney's office told local media. "We executed four federally court-authorized operations today to gather evidence in connection with the investigation into the Mesa County Clerk and Recorder's Office," District Attorney Dan Rubinstein told Colorado Politics. "We did so with assistance from the DA's office from the 21st Judicial District, the Attorney General's Office and the FBI." When reached for comment, a spokesperson for the FBI's Denver field office told Insider that its agents had conducted "authorized law enforcement actions' on Tuesday in relation to an ongoing investigation. A judge last month banned Peters from overseeing elections in the state after Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, accused her in a lawsuit of involvement in leaking sensitive elections data, Colorado's CPR News outlet reported. According to Griswold's lawsuit, the data was taken when Peters invited an unauthorized person to attend a meeting between representatives from the election machine company and county election officials last year. Full Article: FBI Raids Home of Colorado Election Official Accused of QAnon LeakColorado: Legal battle, ethics complaint against embattled Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters persist | Saja Hindi/The Denver Post
The 2021 election in Mesa County, and subsequently the question of who would oversee it, may have ended, but the controversy surrounding Republican County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters has not. The case involving Peters’ counterclaims in response to Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s lawsuit is ongoing, with new filings due on Wednesday. The secretary of state’s lawsuit had resulted in a Mesa County District Court judge barring Peters and Deputy Clerk Belinda Knisley from administering the Nov. 2 election. A joint federal and state investigation into possible criminal charges against Peters over an alleged election equipment security breach is continuing, according to the district attorney’s office on Friday. A Mesa County activist’s complaint against Peters with the Colorado Independent Ethics Commission is pending. And the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office is suing the clerk again, this time for alleged violations of campaign finance law. The saga with Peters, who was elected to her office in 2018, began when she allegedly allowed an unauthorized man access to a secure area in the county elections office in May — with the help of Knisley and one of the county’s election managers, Sandra Brown, according to the lawsuit — and passwords from the voting systems were posted online in August. Knisley was suspended in August for an unrelated workplace conduct investigation and later charged with felony burglary and misdemeanor cyber crime related to allegedly returning to the office, despite the suspension, and using county equipment. Full Article: Legal battle, ethics complaint against embattled Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters persistColorado: Mesa County fires employee tied to Tina Peters scandal | Marianne Goodland/Colorado Politics
Mesa County's elections office has fired an employee allegedly involved in a security breach that later led to a court barring Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters and a deputy clerk from participating in the recently-concluded November elections. The county's Election Director, Brandi Bantz, terminated Sandra Brown, a manager in the Elections Division. An email Tuesday from the Tina Peters Legal Defense Fund revealed Brown’s firing. The email also accused Secretary of State Jena Griswold of orchestrating Brown's firing. Bantz confirmed to Colorado Politics that Brown was terminated. According to the Peters news release, Brown intends to sue for unidentified civil rights violations. While the Peters release didn't identify a reason for Brown's firing, a lawsuit filed Aug. 30 by Griswold claimed Brown and Peters "facilitated the improper presence of the individual identified as Gerald Wood at the May 25 trusted build."
Full Article: Mesa County fires employee tied to Tina Peters scandal | News | coloradopolitics.comColorado: Mesa County needed to restore trust after an election system breach. Here comes Wayne Williams, in his boots. | Nancy Lofholm/The Colorado Sun
A kitschy red, white and blue wooden plaque reading “Of the people, By the people, For the people” hangs over a bank of Dominion Voting screens and scanners in a room tucked inside the warren of elections divisions offices at the Mesa County Clerk and Recorder’s building. Two cameras point at former Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams from corners of the room where he stands in his politically neutral red and blue plaid shirt and his size 15½ cowboy boots. He is taking in every detail of the ballot tabulating going on around him. And he is grinning. Sorting machines whir in the next room sending a stream of yellow ballot envelopes into slots. Election judges, in pairs of Republicans and Democrats, examine torn, stained, mismarked and unsigned ballots. Election workers wheel in locked black cases of ballots that other workers stack in bundles. Everything is operating as it should. This is turning out to be a normal election in abnormal circumstances that have placed Mesa County in a national spotlight at the vortex of election-fraud conspiracy theories. What went on in this room 4½ months ago brought Williams here. It also served as a wake-up call for what can happen when election integrity is compromised from the inside rather than by outside forces.
Full Article: How Mesa County sought to restore trust after its Tina Peters drama