Colorado’s Secretary of State is best known for overseeing statewide elections and associated election issues, but the job description also includes overseeing all of the divisions and programs involved with the Department of State. This includes business records and documents, professional lobbyist records, and even regulation of bingo and raffle events. Secretaries of State are elected for four-year terms, and term-limited after two terms. The candidate with the most votes wins this election, and it’s not necessary to reach 50% or more.

Jena Griswold, Democrat

Jena Griswold

Jena Griswold is Colorado’s incumbent Secretary of State. In 2018, she won her first term by defeating the last incumbent Secretary of State, Republican Wayne Williams, by 52.7% to 44.7%. Since being elected, she has overseen at least six statewide elections, including Colorado’s first Presidential primary elections since the year 2000. As head of the Department of State, she manages a department with a budget of about $35 million and roughly 150 Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) employees.

Griswold holds a bachelor of arts degree in Politics and Spanish Literature from Whitman College and a juris doctor degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She graduated from Estes Park High School. In 2006, Griswold was awarded an international Watson Fellowship, and in 2009 received a Penn Law International Human Rights Fellowship.

Before assuming office, she practiced anti-corruption law and business law, worked as a voter protection attorney for President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign, and ran her own legal office. Former Governor John Hickenlooper appointed her as his liaison to the federal government in 2013, where she helped bring back hundreds of millions of relief dollars to help the Colorado communities hit by the 2013 flood.

Legislative Agendas: Beyond the day-to-day operations of the Department of State, the Secretary of State typically takes an interest in the Colorado legislative process. For example, Griswold started the 2022 session with the legislative agenda linked here, and many of the outlined concept in this agenda became law in 2022.

Legislators in 2022 were called upon to address some serious issues in the modern world of elections. Notably, the Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters was in the news often for issues including allegedly allowing an unauthorized person into restricted election facilities, allowing sensitive digital files to be copied, an indictment, an arrest warrant, leaving the state in 2021 despite active search warrants for her office, and more. 2022 was the year following the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and election officials nationwide including Griswold herself were targeted with various threats against their physical safety.

In 2022, the legislature passed several significant bills regarding election issues. This is not to say Griswold was solely responsible for the legislation, but she and the Secretary of State’s office were part of collaborative efforts to draft and support bills:

  • Internal Election Security Measures: Senate Bill 22-153 reacted to a number of issues associated with Tina Peters’ alleged actions, including prohibiting unauthorized hard drive copying, and creating new penalties for allowing unauthorized access to secure election facilities and releasing sensitive information including system passwords.
  • Protections For Elections Officials: House Bill 22-1273 created penalties for threatening, coercing, or intimidating an election official or making an official’s personal information public on the internet (“doxxing”) if publishing such information poses a threat to the elections official.
  • Vote Without Fear Act: House Bill 22-1086 made it illegal for a person to openly carry a firearm within a polling location or within 100 feet of a drop box or polling location, or inside or within 100 feet of a central counting facility during any election administration activity.

Griswold herself faced threats during her first term, including from a man who was arrested in the Denver suburbs in early July, and a man from Nebraska who pleaded guilty in June to making death threats on social media.

Griswold’s first even-year general election conducted was in 2020, when Colorado and most of the rest of the nation had record voter turnout – 3,291,548 votes cast in Colorado alone. The election was certified on time, though a process that included the regular election, processing overseas ballots, a recount for District Attorney in Judicial District 18, post-election audits, and canvassing. Of course, Colorado’s county clerks do much of the work in their respective counties, but the Colorado Sun reported this election was completed without significant controversy.

It’s not at all unusual for a Secretary of State to wind up in court. Challenges to Colorado’s election systems or practices might be defensible, frivolous, or politically motivated, but at times the only way to settle the issue is in court. For context and not to provide a comprehensive list, here are a few examples of cases Griswold and her office were involved with:

Griswold took office in the wake of potential international threats to election security in the U.S., including concerns about the security of the 2016 election nationwide. According to a 2020 story in State Tech Magazine, Colorado created a “rapid-response cybersecurity team that will help counties combat cyberattacks and disinformation.” Griswold enacted rules requiring counties to have backups of voter registration information in case of malicious attack, the state required two-factor authentication for voter registration system access, and the Secretary of State’s Information Technology team partners with the Colorado National Guard and others to monitor election security.

Griswold has received a few knocks during her tenure, including of Democratic partisanism, although some of the statements in this extensive Colorado Public Radio story came from other partisans. Voters might hear the word “ambitious” during the campaign, and Griswold did in fact form an exploratory committee during her first term to investigate if she should run for the U.S. Senate. In fairness, Griswold will turn 38 years old this year, and Secretaries of State are limited to two terms in office, so if she wants to stay in politics she will need to run for a different office at some point. To provide a bipartisan counterpoint, former Republican Secretary of State Mike Coffman has served as a state Representative, state Senator, state Treasurer, a member of the U.S. House, and Mayor of Aurora. Griswold has also been featured as a guest on national TV reasonably often, during a general time period of which election issues were very newsworthy.

Campaign Website: https://jenaforcolorado.com/

 

Pam Anderson, Republican

Pam Anderson

Pam Anderson, the Republican candidate for Secretary of State, has had extensive experience in local and state election issues. She was elected to her first position in 2003, as the non-partisan City Clerk for the City of Wheat Ridge. She was first elected as the Republican County Clerk and Recorder for Jefferson County in 2006, and was re-elected in 2010. Jefferson is one of Colorado’s largest counties in population, and she managed a staff of more than 110 employees. She also served as legislative co-chair and President of the Colorado County Clerks Association (CCCA) during her tenure with Jefferson County.

She gathered sufficient petition signatures to qualify for the 2022 Republican primary election ballot, as opposed to going through the Republican caucus/assembly process. Anderson won the June Republican primary, receiving 43.9%, defeating both Mike O’Donnell at 29.2% and Tina Peters at 27%.

Anderson earned a bachelor’s degree in History and a Master’s in Public Administration from the University of Colorado-Denver. She has served in a number of volunteer positions, including: CU School of Public Affairs Dean’s Advisory Board, Colorado County Clerks Association Executive Board, Jefferson County Boys and Girls Club-Development Committee, Pew Center’s Election Metrics Advisory Committee, Colorado Secretary of State Bipartisan Election Advisory Committee (BEAC), Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL), Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR), and Jefferson County Library Board Trustee.

She is the daughter of former Republican state legislator Norma Anderson, though Norma Anderson left the Republican Party in 2021 and became unaffiliated. Pam Anderson has served as a Republican precinct committee person in House District 24, and worked as a legislative aide at the Colorado General Assembly for four Republican legislators.

According to her LinkedIn profile, Anderson has owned a small consulting firm since 2015 called Consilium Colorado LLC , able to work on issues including public and non-profit management consultation, government relations and communications, elections policy and administration, policy and technical implementation, program evaluation, strategic planning and campaigns.

While she was a County Clerk, information from Anderson’s campaign website says she developed a signature verification audit in Jefferson County, and utilized technology including programs such as e-recording of public documents, wait time tools for motor vehicles, and implementing the first ballot sorting equipment in the state which became a standard for many counties.

As President of the CCCA, she was among the leading players in developing and supporting Colorado’s House Bill 13-1303, which established much of the framework for the statewide all-mail voting system Colorado uses today. The CCCA as an organization supported and lobbied on behalf of this bill, which also included provisions like same-day voter registration, changes to our system of classifying voters as “inactive,” establishing voter service and polling centers, and increasing the frequency of checks to see if voters had moved in or out of state.

Anderson won a National Secretaries of State Association (NASS) Medallion Award in 2018 for her work on post-election risk-limiting audits that confirm the count of the paper ballots.

Unlike some Republicans, Anderson has consistently said the 2020 Presidential election was not stolen, and told the Colorado Sun that the state has “independent, verifiable paper ballots audits that have found no evidence that the outcome was incorrect.” She also told the Sun she supports Colorado’s current system of mail balloting with options to vote in person if a voter so desires, which is a position at odds with some Republicans and even the Colorado Republican Party’s party platform. It’s also a position consistent with her past support for HB 13-1303.

Campaign Website: https://andersonforsos.com/

 

Amanda Campbell, American Constitution Party

Amanda Campbell ran for Secretary of State in 2018, finishing third behind Griswold and Wayne Williams with 2.1% of the vote.

I could not easily find a campaign website for Campbell, but did find her answers to a Denver Post Q&A for her 2018 campaign and will list a few excerpts:

  • What three policy issues set you apart from your opponent(s)?
    Protected petition process, Clean elections, Easy admin for businesses
  • What are the biggest areas of agreement between you and your opponent(s)?
    I think we all agree that clean elections are important…I think there are just differing opinions on how to achieve success.
  • President Donald Trump’s voter fraud commission requested and received voter information on Coloradans. What would your parameters be on whether to cooperate with inquiries from the federal government?
    Of course, I believe in transparency as long as citizens identities were not at risk.
  • What is Colorado doing right in regard to election security, and what does the state need to do better?
    We have been doing a great job staying on top of increasing technology. Our more rural counties still need help catching up to the Denver metro area. They are the most vulnerable when it comes to voter fraud.
  • Do you support broader disclosure requirements showing who controls and profits from shell corporations that file paperwork with the Secretary of State’s Office?
    Yes I do.

 

Bennett Rutledge, Libertarian

Bennett Rutledge is an IT professional and accountant from Centennial, Colorado, according to the Libertarian Party of Colorado.

In 2018, Rutledge was nominated by the Libertarian Party of Colorado to run for Colorado Secretary of State, though for the general election he was listed on the Ballotpedia website as a “withdrawn or disqualified candidate.” I did not find his name on Secretary of State information as being on the ballot or receiving any votes.

In 2017, Rutledge ran for District 2 of the Centennial City Council, finishing fourth with 14%.

As of early October 2022 his campaign website was “continuously under development,” but readers can learn more about his campaign at the link below.

Campaign Website: https://bennettrutledge.info/issues.html

 

Gary Swing, Unity Party

Gary Swing was a Green Party candidate for state representative in 1996, for Congress five times from 2010 through 2018, and ran for Congress in Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District with the Unity Party in 2020. His website for his last Congressional run said he was a “cultural events promoter.”

His current website for this office doesn’t list a lot of issues directly about his run for Secretary of State, at least as of mid-September 2022. However, he has been active over the years in discussions about alternative systems of governance and elections. For a few excerpts:

  • Better voting methods should be implemented to secure fair representation for a politically diverse population.
  • Ninety-four nations use proportional representation to secure fair, inclusive representation for diverse populations in their parliaments. Political authority should be decentralized in the hands of state and federal legislators who are elected by an open party list system of proportional representation.
  • In a single transferable vote system, voters rank individual candidates. If your first choice doesn’t have enough support to win, your ballot is transferred to your highest ranked candidate who can be helped by your ballot. In a district with nine seats to be elected, a candidate needs one-tenth of the vote to be elected.

Campaign Website: https://theswingvote.wixsite.com/unity

Jan Kok, Approval Voting Party

Jan Kok ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House in Congressional District 1 in 2020. According to a Denver Post Q and A in 2020, he is a software and electrical engineer who earned a bachelor of science degree in computer science from CSU, and co-founded The Center for Election Science.

He also did a Q and A with Colorado Community Media, and gave one answer about why election reform was his top issue in his race for Congress.

“In Florida 2000, more voters preferred Gore over Bush (if you include the Nader voters who preferred Gore), yet Bush won. And it can just as easily go the other way. In 1992, more voters preferred Bush over Clinton, yet Clinton won. I will promote Approval Voting which allows voters to vote for as many candidates as they like, and whoever gets the most votes wins. Approval Voting can reduce or eliminate the “wrong winner” phenomenon, the “spoiler” and “vote splitting” effects, and other problems with our vote-for-one voting method.”

Kok also told the Denver Post he supports proportional representation for legislative and Congressional races, and supports National Popular Vote.

Campaign Website: https://www.approvalvotingparty.com/jan-kok-sos/

Richard’s Take

Vote Griswold. She’s done the job for four years under challenging circumstances, and it’s been tough to find examples of how there were serious and honest problems – not unfounded allegations – with any of the elections she’s overseen.

Anderson has an exemplary resume for this position as well, but even though she’s certainly familiar with the workings of a Secretary of State she hasn’t had four years literally doing the job she’s running for. If she’s elected I do assume she would do a competent job, but I cannot state strongly enough how much of a mistake I believe putting a Republican in the Secretary of State’s office would be at this point in history. The rest of this sentence is not meant to be directly about Anderson, but voters ought to consider that political parties and political networks naturally have connections with elected officials, and many recent Republican or right-wing actions regarding elections have been unforgivably bad, including but not limited to:

  • The date of the tragic and violent January 6 insurrection at the Capitol was chosen because it was when Congress was scheduled to certify the 2020 Presidential election, as the then-President and other right-wing leaders falsely claimed the election was stolen.
  • Before and following January 6, right-wing election denialism was rampant in certain states throughout the Union, along with the aforementioned threats to election officials.
  • Republicans in the Arizona legislature authorized a third-party audit from a little-known company called “ Cyber Ninjas,” prompting this headline from Politico saying that Arizonans were saying “Never heard of them.” Still, the legislative majority trusted this unknown company with Arizona’s election data, some of which was later reportedly taken to a lab in Montana.
  • There were allegedly illegal election actions right here in Colorado, including Republican county clerks Tina Peters of Mesa County and Dallas Schroeder of Elbert County, who made unauthorized copies of election system hard drives.
  • Reports are surfacing of encouragement for right-wing poll watchers to be disruptive inside of election facilities.

Anderson’s campaign has emphasized a few general raps against Griswold, including that she’s a partisan. Well, sorry, but the lifetime Republican Anderson is partisan too. Here’s a graphic from during her primary election campaign.

Mentioning “ballot harvesting” to me is a partisan dog whistle, intentional or not. Here’s another esteemed opinion on the matter for illustration:

So-called ballot harvesting is the practice of a third party taking someone’s completed ballot and delivering it to a polling location or drop box. Colorado law states that a voter may deliver “the ballot to any person of the elector’s own choice or to any duly authorized agent of the county clerk and recorder or designated election official for mailing or personal delivery;” up to 10 ballots per person for most people.

I have actually done this, in my role as a local precinct captain. I took the ballot of an elderly neighbor and, horrors, delivered it to a polling place for him. His ballot was delivered on time, just like he trusted me to do.

Nancy Martorano Miller, poli-sci prof at the University of Dayton, recently said, “I don’t like the term “ballot harvesting” because it implies fraud or illegality. I prefer “ballot collection.” I’m with the professor here. A voter has to approve someone to take their ballot for delivery to election offices or drop boxes, and they have an obligation to say “no” if they don’t trust the person asking.

And opposing HR1 is the epitome of a partisan position. It passed the U.S. House on an almost exact straight party-line vote with every Republican member who voted voting “no.”

HR 1 is a great bill that would have established a whole bunch of provisions that would have made it easier for legally eligible voters to vote. Check out this outline from the Brennan Center For Justice or read the bill, but here’s a Cliffs Notes sample of what HR1 would have done:

  • Established online voter registration systems for all federal elections, literally making it easier for people to register to vote
  • Established Automatic Voter Registration (AVR), which would have automatically registered people to vote when they provide information to government agencies like the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). According to the Brennan Center, AVR could register up to 50 million new eligible voters and make voter rolls more accurate
  • Required states to offer same-day voter registration, which Colorado already has.
  • Prohibit and create penalties for people who interfere with voter registration
  • Provide funding to get voter registration information to high school seniors
  • Prohibit “voter caging”—the practice of sending mail to people on the voter rolls, compiling a list of the mail that is returned undelivered, and using that list to purge or challenge voters’ registrations.

I’m actually not opposed to expanding audits, but they take time and resources, and Coloradans should know every county is already required by law to conduct post-election risk limiting audits, with due credit given here to Anderson’s past efforts. Counties pull a random sample of ballots, and a bipartisan audit board examines what’s on these ballots to make sure it matches what’s been recorded. If there are discrepancies, counties can conduct additional rounds of audits all the way to a recount of the entire election. You can read the results of audits done of the 2022 Colorado primaries at this link. Furthermore, county canvass boards convene after every election to account for each ballot cast.

I have no reason to believe Anderson was suggesting a third-party audit like the Cyber Ninjas in Arizona, but in my opinion Griswold was right to adopt emergency rules to prevent a Cyber Ninjas-like audit in Colorado, and Republican state legislator Ron Hanks actually sued Griswold over this matter, saying “an independent forensic audit is necessary.” In my opinion, Coloradans deserve nothing but trustworthy and accountable examinations into election systems, not the work of organizations that most people have never heard of.

Not all of what I’ve said above is Anderson’s fault, but I will repeat that I simply can’t encourage voters to put a Republican back in charge of our elections in Colorado. And here are a few snippets on elections directly from the adopted Colorado Republican state platform:

  • The people of Colorado, on both sides of the aisle, continue to mistrust the accuracy of election results
  • Illegally cast votes directly cancel out legally cast votes
  • End automatic voter registration
  • Voting shall be in person on Election Day at the precinct voting center, with voter ID.
  • Mail in ballots shall be permitted only for active-duty military, and registered voters who request a mail in ballot because they are physically unable to vote in person.
  • Ballots should be counted by hand by election judges in each precinct.

Coloradans should not deny that we’re in a nationwide battle for the future of our democratic processes. Griswold has spent much time and effort over the last four years protecting Colorado from serious partisan threats to our physical and social election systems – along with statewide election officials who don’t deserve the threats they’re receiving – and it would be a very bad mistake for Colorado voters not to return Griswold to office in 2022.

 

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