The numbers didn’t add up: A judge says Colorado’s elections office didn’t either

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice

Jonathan Ambler read the article more than once. Republicans in Pueblo County had reported tens of thousands in contributions. Democrats—who had controlled local politics for generations and operated out of their own headquarters—had reported barely a few thousand.

It didn’t square. So he started digging.

What he found led to two formal complaints, a dismissal by Colorado’s top elections office, and now, a Denver judge ordering that same office to go back and do the work again.

A court steps in where the state stepped away

On March 26, Denver District Court Judge Bruce Jones ruled that the Colorado Secretary of State’s office improperly dismissed Ambler’s campaign finance complaints against the Pueblo County Democratic Party.

The case, Ambler v. Colorado Secretary of State Elections Division, now returns to the state for further investigation.

The court agreed with the Secretary of State on one point. Older claims were filed too late. But on the core dispute, the judge found the dismissal did not hold up.

The ruling pointed to an investigation that failed to fully examine evidence already in the record and instead leaned on incomplete analysis and unsupported conclusions.

That includes evidence showing a property owned by the party’s affiliated committee and used by the party functioned as a hub for campaign activity.

The order itself shows why the case did not simply survive. It shows what the court believed the Secretary of State’s office failed to fully confront.

The judge did not rule that violations occurred.

He ruled that the state had not done enough to decide that they had not.

RMV requested comment from the Colorado Secretary of State’s office regarding the court’s findings. The office did not respond.

What Ambler saw—and couldn’t explain

Ambler wasn’t looking for a legal fight. He was trying to understand a contradiction.

“I did a lot of research, couldn’t really find anything through Tracer,” he said, referring to the state’s campaign finance database.

The reports showed a party raising just a few thousand dollars a year.

At the same time, the party operated out of a building, held events and maintained a presence that suggested something more substantial behind the scenes.

“That really made no sense,” he said.

His investigation led him to the party’s affiliated central committee, which operated a licensed bingo program—a steady source of revenue for more than a decade. According to Ambler, the bingo operation brought in roughly $300,000 to $400,000 a year—year after year.

Over time, the totals grew into the millions.

Millions in revenue—and one unanswered question

Ambler’s second complaint alleged more than $3 million in contributions and over $1 million in expenditures tied to the bingo operation. Background materials describe a total reaching millions in transactions over an 11-year span.

But even that did not resolve the whole picture.

“There was $3 million in contributions, $2 million in expenses that I could track,” he said. “That leaves the question—what happened to the other million dollars?”

He is careful about what he is alleging.

“They didn’t do anything illegal as far as the bingo went,” he said. “What they were doing wrong was simply not disclosing what they were doing.”

Then came the point that kept bothering him.

“Why were they hiding all of this money?”

The state said no. The court said look again

The Secretary of State’s Elections Division initially found the complaints raised potential violations. Then it dismissed them. The party was given opportunities to correct the filings and did not do so.

The office said most of the claims were too old to pursue and that the remaining ones didn’t have enough evidence to move forward.

The court saw something missing.

It found the dismissal overlooked key evidence, including how the property was actually used and accepted assumptions about the relationship between the party and its affiliated committee that the judge said were not fully supported by the record.

The judge did not rule that violations occurred.

He said the state had not done enough to decide whether there were.

Not just one case

That criticism lands at a moment when the office itself is under a brighter spotlight, with Secretary of State Jena Griswold running for attorney general on an election integrity platform.

“We have not been playing on a level playing field,” he said.

He points to Pueblo County, where Democrats have held dominant political control for decades, while Republicans, he argues, were left competing against a system that did not fully show its resources on paper.

“If all finance complaints received the same kind of treatment as this did,” Ambler said, “what impact has that had on our electoral process?”

He does not believe this was a one-time miss. Ambler points to something he says anyone can check for themselves.

On the Secretary of State’s website, he said, there are pages of outstanding campaign finance fines—some stretching back years—that remain unpaid.

Ambler said that’s when he stepped back from this case and pointed to something bigger.

“If you just total up the first page, it’s into the millions of dollars,” he said. “And there’s like 10 to 15 pages outstanding.”

“The Secretary of State never enforces anything, really.”

Ambler keeps coming back to an elementary concern. Are the rules applied the same to everyone?

By Friday morning, Pueblo County Republicans were already celebrating the ruling on social media, calling it “a huge win” and framing it as a test of transparency and accountability. 

Now the case goes back

The case now returns to the Secretary of State’s office for further investigation.

How that review unfolds—and whether it answers the questions the court said were left open—is still unclear.

The Pueblo County Democratic Party has maintained that its bingo revenue is separate from political activity. The court didn’t take that explanation at face value.

Ambler says he hasn’t moved on from what first caught his attention. The numbers still don’t add up.

Whether they ever did is now back in the Secretary of State’s hands—by court order.