Rocky Mountain Voice

Rocky Mountain Voice

The numbers didn’t match: El Paso’s canvass exposes a statewide reporting failure the state never explained
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

The numbers didn’t match: El Paso’s canvass exposes a statewide reporting failure the state never explained

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Colorado voters expected a routine post–Election Day canvass after the November 4 coordinated election. Instead, El Paso County became ground zero for the latest crisis involving Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s office after a canvass board member noticed that the numbers on the state’s website didn’t match the county’s certified reports. The mismatch surfaced publicly after businessman and election analyst Peter Bernegger posted screenshots of the Election Night Reporting (ENR) CSV file on Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/PeterBernegger/status/1991610012989329540?s=20 What began as one discrepancy quickly revealed a statewide reporting failure. The ENR CSV file published by the Secretary of State contained contest-level totals that ...
What unfolded during the uncertified transition
Rocky Mountain Voice, Local, Top Stories

What unfolded during the uncertified transition

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Actions taken before the board was sworn in Florissant’s May 2, 2023 election put five new people on the fire district board, and the change was obvious right away. The newcomers had run together as a coordinated slate. Within weeks, their actions toward Fire Chief Erik Holt sparked a sequence of events that ended with his firing, a criminal investigation left on the floor—and a lawsuit now sitting before the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. This is what happened after the election—most of which voters never saw.  For details on the election-day conduct that triggered Holt’s report to prosecutors, see our companion investigation. A board acting before it was seated The election hadn’t been certified yet because a civil challe...
Clear on camera, dismissed on paper
Rocky Mountain Voice, Local, Top Stories

Clear on camera, dismissed on paper

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Inside the election case DA investigators said showed “clear violations”—and why the same office that prosecuted election fraud refused to touch it A fire chief knows what a five-alarm emergency looks like. When something is burning, he responds. He doesn’t wait for someone else to handle it. That was the mindset Erik Holt carried in 2023 when the security cameras inside his fire station began showing behavior that made him stop, rewind the footage, and stare. He believed he had uncovered an emergency worth reporting. He did not know that the alarm he pulled would be the only one the system refused to answer. The fire chief who didn’t look away Before Teller County voters ever heard his name, Holt was a fireman and a father. A caree...
SBA brings disaster loan support to counties hit hardest by Elk and Lee fires
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

SBA brings disaster loan support to counties hit hardest by Elk and Lee fires

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Small businesses on the Western Slope are still digging out from the economic fallout of the Lee and Elk Fires—and the mudslides and debris flows that followed in August. The Lee Fire grew at a pace that stunned fire officials, blowing past 100,000 acres in about a week and briefly becoming the fourth-largest wildfire in Colorado history before later mapping placed it as the fifth-largest. Federal disaster loans are now available to help cover those losses, and the declaration extends across Garfield, Moffat, Rio Blanco and Routt counties, plus Utah’s Uintah County. Rio Blanco County—where the SBA will place its Business Recovery Center—has some of the highest exposure in the region. Local officials estimate more than 80 percent of the county...
Colorado’s “Reform Paradox”: Falling Recidivism, Rising Violence, and the Real-World Cost of Dangerous Releases
Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

Colorado’s “Reform Paradox”: Falling Recidivism, Rising Violence, and the Real-World Cost of Dangerous Releases

By Shaina Cole | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice The Common Sense Institute’s October report shows Colorado’s three-year recidivism rate falling from about 52 percent in 2019 to near 31 percent in 2022. On paper that looks like improvement. In practice, the number tells only a small piece of the story.  CSI makes it clear that the number drops mostly because fewer people are going to prison at all. The state’s incarcerated population has shrunk, felony filings are down, and more defendants are getting funneled into diversion programs or handed PR bonds under Colorado’s evolving bail practices. When the state isn’t locking people up, fewer people return to prison later. That’s not a public-safety miracle. It’s just the math. Ask people who actually live here whether things...
Want to be happier? Be thankful this Thanksgiving
Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, National, Top Stories

Want to be happier? Be thankful this Thanksgiving

By Russ Minary | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice “When it comes to life, the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.” (G. K. Chesterton) This year on Thursday Nov. 27th, our nation celebrates the official Federal holiday of Thanksgiving. President George Washington created this annual celebration with his Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1789, stating “…it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor (and)… to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them a...
CU Denver Puts Its Pro-Hamas Hate on Full Display
Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, Local, Top Stories

CU Denver Puts Its Pro-Hamas Hate on Full Display

By Ahnaf Kalam | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Every so often, a university event accidentally tells the truth about the institution hosting it. The recent panel on November 19,  “Gaza: Two Years On” at the University of Colorado Denver – my alma mater – was one such moment: a rare occasion when the carefully maintained façade of academic neutrality collapsed, revealing the fetid ideological machinery underneath. It was presented as an open conversation, a balanced intellectual exchange. In practice, it was a ceremony—an orchestrated display of political piety in which the outcome was preordained, the narrative sealed in advance. Even the panel composition made this clear: three anti-Israel speakers and a lone Israeli Jewish professor, the only person on stage with firs...
Griswold Leads Democratic Secretaries of State Pressing DOJ and DHS Over Federal Use of Voter Data 
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Griswold Leads Democratic Secretaries of State Pressing DOJ and DHS Over Federal Use of Voter Data 

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold is leading a group of Democratic election officials challenging the Trump administration over how federal agencies are using requested voter roll data. Their concerns are detailed in a four-page letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. The U.S. Department of Justice issued requests earlier this year for state-wide voter registration lists from multiple states, including Colorado.  In several cases, DOJ asked for “the full, unredacted statewide voter registration list, including registrants’ dates of birth, state driver’s license numbers, and last four digits of Social Security numbers.” Colorado’s request is documented in a May 12 lette...
The Press Has Become the Enemy of Truth and The Epstein Pattern Proves It
Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, National, Top Stories

The Press Has Become the Enemy of Truth and The Epstein Pattern Proves It

By C.J. Garbo | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice There was a time in this country when journalism meant something. It meant moral courage. It meant truth telling. It meant pulling corruption into the light even if it scorched the powerful. That era is gone. The modern press no longer defends truth. It orchestrates narratives. It does not expose the darkness. It manages it. If you want the clearest proof, look no further than the Jeffrey Epstein case. No story in modern American history has better revealed the press’s rotting soul. Epstein ran a global trafficking operation involving the rich, the powerful, and the politically connected. Children were abused. Women were exploited. A network of elites participated or enabled. And yet the media’s coverage has been sporadic, ...
Trump said release the Epstein files—now Congress agrees
Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, National, Top Stories

Trump said release the Epstein files—now Congress agrees

By RMV Editorial Board Congress finally did what Washington avoided for years. The House went 423 to 1 and the Senate—unanimously. Washington doesn’t move like that unless people feel something shifting under their feet. Whatever held this shut is starting to give way. For years Democratic leaders and their media allies pushed the idea that Jeffrey Epstein was a Trump problem. If Epstein’s name came up, Trump’s name came next. It was a neat little narrative that kept uncomfortable questions away from Democrats.  Then Congress began releasing documents, and the story stopped cooperating. The clearest political fingerprints on the Epstein files now belong to Democrats, not Trump. The evidence shows Epstein’s network cultivating political allies, guiding congressional questio...

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