A system under scrutiny: Colorado’s election system faces clash over how it’s verified

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice

When President Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to compile a nationwide citizenship list and share it with state election officials, it set off a debate in Colorado that hasn’t slowed.

So what does that actually mean for Colorado? RMV asked two people on opposite sides of the issue—and got two very different answers.

Matt Crane, executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association (CCCA), says Colorado’s system is strong, continuously maintained and already uses the federal tools referenced in the order. Bob Cooper, a director with the Colorado Institute for Fair Elections, argues the system cannot be independently audited for accuracy—and that’s the problem.

The divide isn’t about whether the system works. It’s about who gets to prove it.

Colorado has already joined a multistate lawsuit challenging the order, arguing it violates the Constitution by shifting authority over elections away from states and Congress and into the executive branch.

Crane did not dispute that Colorado’s voter rolls contain errors.

“Colorado’s voter rolls are not perfect—no state’s are,” he wrote, adding that perfection isn’t attainable in a large, constantly changing system and that the key question is whether it is actively maintained, which he said Colorado’s system is.

He pointed to a layered process that pulls from multiple data sources, including state health records, driver’s license updates, interstate registration data, the Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE database, Social Security records and National Change of Address data from USPS.

List maintenance, he emphasized, is ongoing—not periodic.

“The result is not a perfect list, but a well-managed one with strong processes that continually improve data quality.”

On the executive order itself, his concern is not the technology—but the authority behind it.

“The Constitution assigns primary authority over election administration to the states, with regulatory authority to Congress, not the Executive Branch,” he wrote. “That raises serious legal questions about whether this type of directive is within presidential authority.”

He said he would support improving federal data systems for state use—but through legislation, not executive action.

Cooper’s response focuses less on process and more on structure.

“There is a conflict of interest to have the people responsible for entering the registration auditing the registration,” he wrote. “That is why the federal data is so important.”

He does not dispute that clerks are doing their jobs. His argument is that the system lacks independent verification.

Colorado does conduct post-election audits through what’s known as a risk-limiting audit, or RLA. Colorado’s legislature ordered risk-limiting audits in 2009. The system was implemented later through Secretary of State rules, and current state law now requires counties to conduct them after covered elections.

That, Cooper argues, is where Colorado’s current system falls short.

Cooper also questioned how Colorado’s risk-limiting audits are carried out, arguing they fall short of how the method was originally designed and do not address voter roll accuracy or eligibility.

Cooper said COIFFE’s own analysis points to the problem, citing undeliverable ballots, duplicate registrations and address discrepancies.

In El Paso County, officials used Experian data to compare voter records against current address information. According to Cooper, the first run identified more than 51,000 registrations with mismatched addresses—roughly a 10.8 percent error rate.

The findings were shared with the CCCA. Cooper said that while El Paso acted, the CCCA did not take action on the information or the proposed solution.

Cooper expands on those findings—and the El Paso County approach—in a separate RMV commentary detailing the data, costs and policy implications.

Crane argues the existing system is effective and must operate through established legal processes.

For Colorado voters, the disagreement comes down to this: How do you know the system is accurate?

Crane’s position is that Colorado already cross-checks its voter rolls against federal data sources, including SAVE and Social Security records, as part of routine maintenance.

Cooper argues those checks are not the same as an independent audit.

“If Colorado already cross-references voter rolls against SAVE and SSA data, what does the federal citizenship list provide?” he wrote. “An independent audit of the accuracy of the state’s registration.”

He said access to federal citizenship data is limited, making independent verification impossible without federal involvement.

“Citizens are not permitted to get citizenship data records,” he wrote.

He also raised concerns about how mail ballots are handled.

“The ballot movement does not have a complete chain of custody,” he wrote. “No bank would allow that.”

Cooper argues the order fills a gap states cannot address alone.

Critics—including Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold—have called President Trump’s order “undemocratic, unconstitutional and dangerous,” warning it could disenfranchise eligible voters and disrupt election systems already in place.

The executive order focuses on citizenship—who is eligible to vote and how that’s verified using federal data.

In Colorado, that question has typically been handled through ongoing list maintenance rather than a formal audit process. That approach has been challenged before. Voter roll removals in Colorado didn’t stay flat during that period. They moved—from about 172,000 to more than 306,000 per reporting cycle.

That shift came as the state was working through a federal lawsuit filed in 2020 by Judicial Watch, which argued Colorado wasn’t doing enough to remove ineligible voters. The case was settled in 2023, with the state agreeing to provide detailed voter roll data each year for six years, while continuing to deny any violation of federal law.

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton has pointed to those numbers as evidence the lawsuit made a difference, calling the settlement “a major victory for all Colorado voters” and crediting the case with what he described as a “massive voter roll clean up in Colorado.”

The courts may decide the order—but not the debate it exposed

The legal challenge now moving through federal court echoes Crane’s constitutional concerns—that election authority rests with states and Congress, not the president.

Where Crane sees overreach, Cooper sees urgency.

When asked whether strengthening existing systems is enough, Cooper rejected the idea.

“Absolutely no,” he wrote. “We need a public forum on this.”

Cooper argues the order forces a question Colorado has avoided.

“The EO is just for this election and it will be difficult to implement but it must be done,” he wrote. “It should be viewed as a reset of the voter rolls.”

In his view, that reset would create a verified baseline that future elections can be measured against.

“We have very good clerks and election officials,” he wrote. “The issue is none of them have business experience on how businesses must be audited for compliance and fraud avoidance.”

The courts will decide whether the order stands.

But the debate it sparked is not likely to disappear with it.

Colorado’s system is built on continuous maintenance, layered data and compliance with state and federal law.

Cooper’s argument is that none of that replaces independent verification.

Crane’s position is that while the system is not perfect, it is functioning as designed—and that the question is not whether it should change, but who has the constitutional authority to make that change.

The executive order did not create that divide.

It brought it into the open.