By Rocky Mountain Voice Editorial Board
When Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold announced that she was joining a multi-state lawsuit to block President Trump’s Executive Order (EO) on election integrity, she declared the action a defense of democracy itself.
“We will not wait on the sidelines while Donald Trump tries to legislate from the Oval Office and defies the Constitution,” Griswold said in an April 3 press release.
But while Griswold accuses President Trump of federal overreach, her own record suggests a pattern of constitutional violations that have unfolded under the banner of election protection.
In fact, her treatment of Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters has become a case study in why federal oversight of elections—as President Trump’s EO proposes—may be more necessary than ever.
A loyalty oath in exchange for access
In 2021, Tina Peters was still the elected clerk and recorder for Mesa County. After raising concerns about voting machine transparency and taking a forensic image of the county election management, she was ousted by Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold.
When offered her job back, it came with a condition: she had to publicly renounce her own views.
The statement Griswold’s office required her to sign stated: “I hereby fully and completely repudiate, retract, and disavow the statement I made during a FacebookLive broadcast in which I stated, ‘We’ve got to get those machines so that they are transparent to the people and they’re not able to do what they’re designed to do.’”
Peters refused, and in a pointed response, stated, “Please name one time in the history of the world in which the side demanding you ‘repudiate’ your beliefs has been the good guys.”
This wasn’t a partisan standoff. It was a direct violation of Peters’ First Amendment rights—a state official using the power of her office to coerce political speech from an elected county clerk.
Legal overreach, constitutional hypocrisy
Griswold argues that President Trump’s EO tramples state sovereignty. Yet the history of her own conduct meets the threshold outlined in the order’s justification for federal oversight: “These agreements shall aim to provide the Department of Justice with detailed information on all suspected violations of State and Federal election laws discovered by State officials, including information on individuals who intimidated or threatened voters or election officials.”
Griswold’s forced retraction requirement, paired with her aggressive legal posture against President Trump, reveals a double standard.
She defends democracy on cable news while crushing it at home.
A pattern of suppression and retaliation
Griswold’s handling of Peters isn’t isolated. It’s part of a broader pattern of suppressing dissent, limiting transparency and centralizing control.
Her office leaked BIOS passwords for 34 counties during active elections in 2024, and blamed the fallout on others.
Another lesser-known but critical policy shift came in 2021, when Griswold issued a rule reducing signature verification from bipartisan teams to a single election judge. Clerks across Colorado objected, citing the potential for fraud and human error.
Their concerns proved valid. In October 2024, Mesa County discovered fraudulent ballots that passed signature checks and were counted. Rather than increase oversight in response, Griswold left the one-judge rule in place.
Making matters worse, when Mesa County Clerk Bobbie Gross asked the Secretary of State to refrain from making a public statement to avoid jeopardizing the county’s active investigation, Griswold held a press conference and issued a press release.
Critics have also raised concerns over the state’s audit process – that they routinely select contests with so few ballots that meaningful review is statistically impossible.
Concerns about Colorado’s election system didn’t stop with whistleblowers like Peters. In 2024, grassroots election integrity group United Sovereign Americans published an extensive analysis of the state’s 2022 election.
Their findings included 1,467,380 voter registrations flagged as facially ineligible or uncertain and 100,693 improperly counted votes. These figures exceed the federal error tolerance defined in the Help America Vote Act by orders of magnitude.
The group filed a Writ of Mandamus asking the court to compel Griswold to correct the rolls and investigate irregularities. Instead of acknowledging the errors or initiating a forensic review, the Secretary of State dismissed the effort.
The refusal to address data-driven discrepancies further eroded public confidence and suggested a defensive posture, not one rooted in transparency.
Further scrutiny came from former gubernatorial candidate and Rocky Mountain Voice founder Heidi Ganahl after she conducted a deep-dive investigation into Douglas County’s 2022 election recount, uncovering glaring transparency issues.
Ganahl’s team found that the recount had been conducted by election staff without manual ballot review or canvass board oversight, violating the spirit, if not the letter, of Colorado election law.
Attempts to inspect ballot images through the Colorado Open Records Act were met with a $212,000 fee estimate and bureaucratic delays.
Even more alarming, Ganahl’s team discovered that some voting machines in the county still had active wireless networking capabilities, contradicting official assurances and public statements to the contrary.
Ganahl’s findings add to the growing body of evidence that Colorado’s reputation as a “gold standard” in election security may be, as she put it, “a bit of fool’s gold.”
Widespread loss of confidence
By October 2024, Griswold’s missteps had triggered a wave of resignation calls. Colorado House Republicans issued a statement saying her actions “undermined the public’s trust in free and fair elections.” U.S. Representative Lauren Boebert added, “I trust our county clerks. I do not trust Jena Griswold.”
El Paso County Clerk Steve Schleiker issued a formal letter citing “significant breaches of integrity,” and the El Paso County Commissioners followed with an official no-confidence resolution.
The Colorado Republican Party called on Griswold’s resignation after taking the BIOS password leak public before the Secretary of State’s office chose to. Former Chair Dave Williams said, “She admitted to the press that she refused to disclose this password leak until our State Party exposed it. This is a cover-up.”
The Colorado Libertarian Party sued the Secretary of State’s office over the BIOS password exposure.
Colorado House Republicans issued a call for Griswold’s resignation and Minority Leader Pugliese questioned the breadth of her oversight, stating, “Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s reckless disregard for professional standards and consistent lack of transparency has threatened trust in our democratic system by causing doubt in the security of our election process.”
These aren’t isolated critiques. They reflect a growing consensus across clerks, legislators and voters that Griswold has compromised her office.
Even the DOJ is taking a second look
In March 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a statement of interest in the case of Tina Peters, suggesting that her nine-year sentence for nonviolent election-related conduct may have been driven by politics.
“The prosecution may have resulted in an exceptionally harsh sentence for a nonviolent, first-time offender,” the DOJ wrote.
The case is now under federal review.
President Trump’s EO: not the threat, but the remedy
President Trump’s EO doesn’t override state authority. It responds to its abuse.
Griswold’s record alone proves why every safeguard in the EO is necessary.
In Colorado, the official who claims to defend democracy demanded an elected clerk disavow her beliefs to regain her job. She imposed partisan rules, botched security and then sued the federal government to defend what she deems as her stomping grounds.
Colorado isn’t the exception. It’s the warning.
If Griswold is what state control looks like, President Trump’s EO isn’t overreach. It’s long overdue.