What Sets J.J. McKinzie Apart in Colorado’s Secretary of State Race

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice

J.J. McKinzie is one of four Republicans running for the open Secretary of State seat,  and he is not running on name recognition. He is running on a resume that looks nothing like most politicians’.

McKinzie spent more than 25 years inside some of the largest companies in the world, advising on regulatory compliance and operational efficiency. He has owned small businesses, led nonprofits, and homeschooled his children for over two decades. 

He holds degrees from Colorado State University, the University of Houston-Clear Lake, and Charis Bible College, with training in psychology, business, technology, futures studies, and biblical studies, including five master’s degrees.

“In consulting, I had to deliver measurable results for Fortune 500 companies,” McKinzie said. “If you didn’t deliver results, the contract was over. That kind of accountability is almost completely absent in government.”

He is running, he says, to change that.

McKinzie’s argument for why he stands apart from other candidates leans on execution over ideology.

“The other candidates in this race share important values, and that matters,” he said. “But this office is fundamentally an administrative position, and the depth of knowledge and experience required to actually deliver on those values is significant. I have spent my entire career building and fixing systems at scale. That preparation is what allows values to translate into real results for Colorado.”

Election Integrity, With Specifics

Colorado’s voter rolls are built, in part, on automatic enrollment. When residents get a driver’s license or access a state benefit, they are registered to vote. McKinzie calls that a problem. “Voter registration should be a deliberate, intentional act,” he said. Ending automatic enrollment is first on his list. 

He also wants a full audit of the state’s voter rolls coordinated with county clerks, and a systematic cross-reference of new registrations against the federal SAVE database, which flags non-citizen documentation status, along with state DMV records.

Another item on his list is less conventional. McKinzie wants to create a formal, protected whistleblower reporting pathway for election integrity concerns, pointing to a gap he says the Tina Peters case exposed. “Regardless of how one views that case, it exposed a serious gap — that there is no clear, protected pathway for reporting suspected election irregularities. Citizens deserve a safe and legitimate way to raise concerns without fear of retaliation,” he said. 

McKinzie leaves little room for ambiguity on Colorado’s universal mail ballot system. He wants it eliminated. “Insecurity is fundamental to how any mail-in ballot system works,” he said. “Universal mail-in voting introduces the potential for compromise at nearly every stage of the process, from ballot delivery to completion to return, and no amount of procedural reform changes that underlying reality.” 

According to McKinzie, “The system simply has too many unmonitorable points of vulnerability to provide the confidence Coloradans deserve. The potential for fraud is built into the design, and that is reason enough to replace it with a system where chain of custody is verifiable and the results can be trusted by everyone.”

Going After Griswold’s Record

When the Department of Justice requested Colorado’s voter roll data, Griswold declined. McKinzie has not let it go. “Providing voter roll data to federal oversight bodies should not be a partisan act,” he said. “It is a basic administrative obligation, and the refusal to comply undermines the very transparency and accountability that every election official owes to the public.”

He presents that dispute as part of his overall critique of outgoing Secretary. “I believe Secretary Griswold has spent more time building a national profile and pursuing partisan litigation than running a clean, efficient office. Her tenure has been defined by press releases and lawsuits rather than measurable improvements in voter roll accuracy, election system transparency, or business services.” 

Full cooperation with federal oversight, he said, would be a first-day directive.

Small Business and the Cost of Compliance

The Secretary of State’s office does more than run elections. It is also the state’s primary point of contact for business registration, licensing, and compliance. McKinzie has spent the campaign listening to what business owners are saying — and two complaints keep surfacing.

The first is fees. The periodic report filing fee was more than doubled in 2024, from $10 to $25, with the stated rationale that businesses should help fund election administration. McKinzie calls this “an inappropriate cost shift onto the private sector.” 

The second is reporting surveys, which he says have expanded in scope and now raise legitimate privacy questions. “In practice, they create the conditions for potential political or religious retaliation,” he said. “No business or nonprofit should have to answer intrusive surveys simply to remain in good standing with the state.”

Asked what success would look like on the business side of the office, McKinzie said it would mean using “every tool available to the Secretary of State to promote business freedom and a pro-liberty environment has been used. That means a state where businesses want to come, where the registration and compliance process is straightforward, where fees are justified and minimal, and where the office functions as a genuine ambassador for prosperity rather than another layer of bureaucracy.”

He draws a practical line on what he can actually do about it. Requirements created administratively within the office, he can remove. Those mandated by the legislature require a different approach. “For those that were legislatively mandated, I would actively advocate to the General Assembly for their elimination,” he said.

The Electability Question

Colorado has not sent a Republican to statewide office in years. Unaffiliated voters are the reason — they are the largest registration bloc in the state and they have not been trending red. McKinzie does not dispute any of that. What he disputes is the idea that his agenda is a hard sell to them.

“I genuinely believe that the reforms I am pursuing — cleaner voter rolls, less bureaucratic burden on businesses, and a Secretary of State office that actually serves people rather than surveilling them — are things that resonate far beyond party lines,” he said.

He also leans on biography. “When an unaffiliated voter looks at my background, they will see something different from the typical political candidate,” McKinzie said. “They will see someone who spent 25 years solving real problems for real organizations, who built businesses, raised and educated his children predominantly outside the system, and has led non-profits in his community. Those are not partisan credentials.”

For McKinzie, success is not measured by which party wins, but by whether the system itself holds up to scrutiny. By the end of a first term, he said, that standard would look like this: “Colorado has elections that are so clean and so well-documented that any party, any independent observer, and any outside organization can examine them and find nothing that is not fully auditable and accountable,” he said. “Not just Republicans being satisfied, but Democrats, independents, and any external reviewer being unable to find legitimate holes in the process. That is the standard.”

It’s also a view shared by a large majority of voters. A recent Pew Research Center survey found 83% of Americans support requiring photo ID to vote, including strong support across party lines.

What the Resume Doesn’t Show

McKinzie was asked what voters would not find on his campaign website. His answer moved away from policy.

“What voters probably would not find on my campaign website is a sense of how naturally this role fits the work I have done throughout my life,” he said. He mentioned teaching about the administrative state at Charis Bible College as formative, giving him practical insight into how government bureaucracies function and where they tend to break down. Then he added something that did not appear anywhere in his campaign literature.

“Underneath the resume, my heart is that of a servant leader. I am not running because I want power. I am running because I hate seeing systems fail the people they are supposed to serve, and inefficiency in government — the kind that wastes people’s time, money, and trust — genuinely drives me to want to fix it.”

He connected that to his years of service in the church. “My service in the church, working alongside people in their most vulnerable and important moments, shapes how I see the people I would serve as Secretary of State. They are not data points or constituents to be managed. They are people with rights — constitutional rights — that deserve to be honored and protected.”

McKinzie’s immediate challenge comes Saturday in Pueblo, where delegates at the Republican state assembly will determine whether he clears the 30% threshold needed to advance to the June 30 primary ballot.

More information is available at jj4colorado.com.