Rocky Mountain Voice

Tag: Election Integrity

Colorado calls its elections a model. Mark Cook says voters have lost oversight of them
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Colorado calls its elections a model. Mark Cook says voters have lost oversight of them

By RMV Staff | Rocky Mountain Voice Colorado's top election officials call the state's voting system a national model. Secretary of State Jena Griswold has described it as the "gold standard," pointing to first-in-the-nation risk-limiting audits, bipartisan checks and ballot tracking. Mark Cook argues that the people the system is supposed to answer to — voters, and the county clerks closest to them — have lost meaningful oversight of how it runs. Cook made that case during a recent appearance on Unleashed with Heidi Ganahl, where the conversation ranged from election transparency and county clerks to Tina Peters and Gov. Jared Polis. Cook's claim is not that one party rigged a result. It is structural: that administration has drifted upward over time, from county clerks to state...
Signature Gathering Intensifies As Colorado Ballot Battles Take Shape
Complete Colorado, Approved, State

Signature Gathering Intensifies As Colorado Ballot Battles Take Shape

By Sherrie Peif | Complete Colorado DENVER– A large-scale signature gathering effort is underway in Colorado as proponents rush to get numerous citizen-initiated ballot measures qualified for the November statewide election, with issues ranging from from a right to hunt and fish to capping the stat income tax rate. The conservative advocacy group Advance Colorado, for example, is hip-deep in the effort, with two measures already on the ballot and at least three others are in the signature gathering phase. Already on the ballot is “Penalties for Fentanyl Crimes,” a statutory change that reinstates certain penalties related to fentanyl that the Democrat-controlled legislature has weakened or removed over the years. A second measure, “Law Enforcement Reporting Requ...
Johnson Signals New Budget Package Could Advance SAVE America Act
TownHall.com, Approved, National

Johnson Signals New Budget Package Could Advance SAVE America Act

By Cameron Arcand | Townhall The next reconciliation bill will have a focus on mismanagement of taxpayer dollars, Speaker Mike Johnson proclaimed on Wednesday. Johnson also previously said the House could potentially add on the SAVE America Act, which already passed the House but struggles to make it out of the Senate due to the 60-vote threshold, he told Fox News on Saturday. https://twitter.com/BasedMikeLee/status/2060757504217493706?s=20 “Republicans are really proud of our work to address fraud, waste, and abuse in government, as you know, and we continue to go forward that we're going to have a third reconciliation bill that comes up in the coming weeks, and you'll see further attention to it paid there,” the speaker said at a news conference on Wednesday...
Colorado became a national model for mail voting. Election Integrity Network says it should go back.
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Colorado became a national model for mail voting. Election Integrity Network says it should go back.

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice The ballot simply shows up weeks before Election Day. Some ballots are filled out the day they arrive. Others sit untouched until the weekend. Too many, most will argue, end up ignored. Eventually, a lot are mailed, taken to a drop box or walked into a polling center.  It’s the only system younger voters have ever known. The Election Integrity Network would prefer something closer to the system Colorado left behind. In May, they released a 116-page handbook outlining what it believes election laws should look like across the country. Before ballots filled the mailbox EIN founder Cleta Mitchell sees Colorado's pre-2013 election system as a blueprint rather than a relic. "Before 2013–14, Colorado used a precinct-based, i...
Peters Release Day Arrives With Key Details Still Unknown
The Colorado Sun, Approved, State

Peters Release Day Arrives With Key Details Still Unknown

By Nancy Lofholm | The Colorado Sun Gov. Jared Polis commuted the former Mesa County clerk’s sentence last month, making her eligible for parole and setting off a national firestorm over her role in attempting to interfere with an election. Tina Peters is scheduled to be released from a state prison in Pueblo Monday after Gov. Jared Polis controversially commuted the former Mesa County clerk’s sentence last month, cutting it in half.Peters, 70, has been imprisoned since 2024 for election fraud and official misconduct after she snuck an outside election denier into the off-limits Mesa County Elections Division office so he could copy the hard drive from the county’s voting system. Sentenced to nine years in October 2024, Polis cut her prison time in half on May 15 and made h...
Judge Rejects Democrat Bid To Block Trump Voting Security Measures
Just The News, Approved, National

Judge Rejects Democrat Bid To Block Trump Voting Security Measures

By John Solomon | Just the News Judge ruled Democrats failed to show they have standing at present to challenge the order or have suffered any harm. A federal judge on Thursday cleared the way for President Donald Trump to implement his executive order tightening mail-in voting, slapping down Democrats’ arguments for now that federal efforts to police voter rolls with citizenship checks were illegal. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointed jurist, ruled that Democrats failed to show they have standing at present to challenge the order or have suffered any harm that would warrant a preliminary injunction. "Given that the Executive Order does not command Plaintiffs to do anything, and that no agency has yet acted pursuant to the Order in a way that c...
Polis Responds To Peters Controversy With Taped Mouth Protest
DENVER7, Approved, State

Polis Responds To Peters Controversy With Taped Mouth Protest

By Robert Garrison | Denver7 Denver7 has been following the latest developments in the Tina Peters case. DENVER — Just a week after Democrats censured Gov. Jared Polis for granting Tina Peters clemency, the governor appeared during a party Zoom meeting Wednesday with tape over his mouth. The governor’s stunt during an internal party briefing was seemingly a reaction to last week’s 89.8% censure vote by the Democratic Party’s central committee, of which he is a member. READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT DENVER7
Tina Peters asks Colorado Supreme Court to overturn convictions after juror wondered if she was “targeted”
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Tina Peters asks Colorado Supreme Court to overturn convictions after juror wondered if she was “targeted”

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Business phone lines belonging to a juror were cut on the first Friday of Tina Peters’ trial. For the next 10 days, the juror wondered if she was being “targeted.”  The Colorado Court of Appeals said in April that none of that required a hearing.  Peters is now asking the Colorado Supreme Court to rule otherwise. Peters’ lawyers say what happened with the juror had a solution that was set by precedent, a 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. And they asked for it—a hearing to investigate whether outside influence may have affected the juror.  Peters’ attorneys filed the motion for the hearing on September 20, 2024. Barrett turned it down later that afternoon. This spring, the Court of Appeals agreed with him. What the ju...
Colorado Officials Push Back As Trump Administration Expands Voter Roll Verification
DENVER7, Approved, National

Colorado Officials Push Back As Trump Administration Expands Voter Roll Verification

By Micah Smith | Denver7 An Associated Press report found the Trump administration has already run millions of voter registrations through a federal government database to determine if the registered voters are eligible to vote. According to the AP, 67 million registrations mostly from Republican-led states have been run through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s verification program and tens of thousands of non-citizens and people who have died have been flagged. Critics said the percentage of non-citizens and deceased individuals is a small fraction of registered voters. As the Trump administration moves to federalize certain election functions, several states including Colorado have sued to block the administration from gaining access to vot...
Hickenlooper Moves To Block Tina Peters From Trump Compensation Fund
Approved, National, The Colorado Sun

Hickenlooper Moves To Block Tina Peters From Trump Compensation Fund

By Jesse Paul | The Colorado Sun U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper plans to force Republicans to vote on an amendment aimed at prohibiting the Trump administration from sending money to former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters and others convicted of crimes that affected elections or election equipment from a $1.8 billion fund created to compensate allies of the GOP president who believe they have been unjustly investigated and prosecuted. The “Anti-Weaponization Fund” of $1.776 billion is part of a settlement that resolves President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns. It will allow people who believe they were targeted for prosecution for political purposes, including by the Biden administration Justice Department, to apply for payouts, cr...