Problems that Broerman, a Republican, and other election officials have repeatedly said don’t exist. Among the visitors was 2020 election denier Shawn Smith of an effort called the U.S. Election Integrity Plan — a group that claims election irregularities and fraud in the 2020 elections in Colorado. One of their requests to Broerman during the meeting in May: give access to the county voting equipment and allow a third party to conduct “a forensic audit.”

Broerman declined, but he described to them in detail the redundant systems of election security measures to show why elections in his county are secure and reliable.

The clerk said Smith, of Colorado Springs, then responded, “Clerk Broerman, we will either do this with you or through you.”

“I took that as a threat that if I didn’t do that, that there would be repercussions for not doing what they wanted me to do,” he said.

That wasn’t the last Broerman heard from this group or others. He, like other local elections officials across the country, have been facing from people trying to cast doubt on the integrity of U.S. elections using unfounded claims of election fraud, spreading the lie that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election.

At an “emergency town hall” meeting in mid-February of FEC (Faith, Education, Commerce) United, a right-wing political group with a militia wing, speakers called for completely dismantling the current election system and starting over. They applauded the embattled Republican Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters now running for secretary of state, who spoke at the meeting, and Smith accused Secretary of State Jena Griswold of being involved in election fraud, saying those who are “deserve to hang.” They also called out clerks like Broerman – referring to him as a RINO.

Although Broerman resisted the demand for forensic audit, election security experts point to a growing number of elections officials, some of whom are tasked with overseeing local elections, who are joining those who deny the legitimacy of 2020 election results. They use rhetoric or take actions that cast doubt on the integrity of free and fair elections. The Denver Post spoke to national election experts, the secretary of state and county clerks, including Peters, about the 2020 election and claims of widespread fraud.

Beyond Peters, who has cast doubt on the 2020 election results and continued to spread allegations of election fraud, it’s unclear the number of Colorado clerks who have been contacted about taking similar actions. David Levine, an elections integrity fellow at the Alliance for Securing Elections in Washington, D.C., called it “extremely problematic” and said it wouldn’t be a surprise if other clerks are looking at what Peters is doing and saying about elections and use that as inspiration for their own candidacies.

“Under the radar” access to voting machines

An email filed in a federal lawsuit from the founder of FEC United described an effort to get third-party access into Dominion Voting Systems machines — a common target of election deniers — in the state.

“You also need to be aware of what we’re doing in Colorado in gaining access to the Dominion Systems under the radar. We have several county clerks cooperating,” wrote Joe Oltmann of FEC United in an email to Trump lawyer Sidney Powell.

The United States has always had to protect its voting system infrastructure against insider threats, but experts worry that conspiracy theories spreading since the 2020 election will be damaging to democracy.

“I do think that it is a risk that some of these people that come into office embracing the ‘Big Lie’ would be willing to manipulate election results in the future,” said Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, who has researched . “After all, if you believe that the last election was stolen from you, or you claim that you believe that, you’d be more likely to take steps to steal it back in a future election. I don’t think we can know about any one particular person and what she’s going to do if in power, but I think overall, that’s a risk.”

So, when Colorado’s Democratic secretary of state launched separate investigations into three GOP county clerks’ conduct over allegations of possible election security protocol breaches, officials and election security experts across the country paid attention.

“Unfortunately, it’s not an understatement to say that U.S. democracy is under threat,” Levine said.

Griswold, a Democrat, said she believes that in Colorado and nationally, there’s a broader strategy for an attempt to “undermine American democracy.”

Griswold has sued Peters and later Elbert County Clerk Dallas Schroeder over allegations of making unauthorized copies of election servers. An investigation into the actions of a third county clerk, Merlin Klotz of Douglas County, cleared him.

A judge ultimately barred Peters from overseeing the 2021 election and the secretary is seeking a similar outcome in a lawsuit for 2022 after Peters refused to comply with security protocols and renounce her statements about voting equipment, including “we’ve got to get those machines so that they are transparent to the people and they are not able to do what they’re designed to do.” She’s also facing multiple investigations, including by a grand jury.

Peters’ candidacy for secretary of state

Peters who has aligned herself with Smith, CEO of MyPillow Mike Lindell and other 2020 election deniers, has been held up as a hero among supporters, including by Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

In an interview with The Denver Post at the end of February, Peters called the investigations into her actions “unethical” and “political” attacks by Griswold. When asked if she and other clerks were trying to get elected to positions that could change the outcome of elections, she said, “well, unfortunately, that is what it appears that has been done and that has no place in Colorado.”

“It’s not about me, and I can’t speak for other clerks, but I happen to be the one who observed and reported on highly suspicious activities, just like we’re talking about regarding voting machines in my county, and the voters have lost faith in the integrity of our elections because of that,” she said. She claimed election records were deleted, which the secretary of state has rejected.

When asked when she first got involved with Smith, Oltmann and others, Peters said “there’s a lot of people sounding the alarm for what’s going on and I can’t speak for them. All I can tell you is why I’m running for Colorado secretary of state.”

Faith in elections

Oltmann, who wrote the email to Trump’s attorney about coordination with county clerks, declined an interview request, but said in an email: “… there was never a security breach, only an investigation into the corrupt and illegal behavior by an election machine company and the radical swath of evil doers in the government who have betrayed the people and irrevocably broken trust.”

The U.S. Election Integrity Plan did not respond to requests for an interview with Smith for this story. In an online show with Bannon, Smith announced a new “election integrity” organization called funded by Lindell. Smith has also been named in the investigation by the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office as someone who allegedly helped direct the Elbert County clerk on the way to make copies of the hard drives of the election servers. And he has been of rioters who were outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Clerks Klotz and Schroeder are also among a group of plaintiffs who filed a lawsuit against her, calling for an Arizona-style forensic audit of the election systems and claiming that the voting equipment used in the election was not properly certified – a claim that other county clerks and state officials have said is untrue. Klotz declined to comment for the story and and his attorney John Case did not respond to requests for comment.

Bannon and other Trump allies have made it no secret that they encourage those who don’t trust the 2020 election results to run for office or serve on local election boards. The Washington Post reported that are running across the country for state positions that have embraced false claims about the 2020 election.

“It’s a sad fact that today, we have many people seeking to become the chief election officers who wouldn’t be able to tell a free and fair election from a rigged one,” Levine said. He added that Colorado voters should consider who will conduct free and fair elections when voting, regardless of partisanship.

Colorado County Clerks Association Executive Director Matt Crane, a former Republican clerk in Arapahoe County, said several Colorado counties have been contacted by various groups and individuals, urging that they allow “forensic audits” of their voting equipment systems, which he believes may have originated with the U.S. Election Integrity Plan.

One letter sent in July to Colorado county clerks and the secretary of state was signed by Smith and Maurice Emmer, who has spoken at events spreading baseless claims of widespread election fraud. It repeated the claim that the state’s voting equipment systems were improperly certified.

In another email shared by Crane, Emmer sent a form letter he encouraged individuals to send to their county clerks. It references a “forensic report” commissioned by Peters and urges clerks to participate in what appears to be an effort to undermine the reliability of voting equipment.

Emmer declined an interview request but in an email said he wasn’t affiliated with any group and was sending letters to “notify clerks about the illegality of voting systems,” adding that Griswold was allegedly “concealing this information from clerks. He declined to say how many clerks had received the letters or which clerks provided access to their voting equipment. It����ap unclear if clerks in other states are receiving similar letters.

When asked about these types of actions undermining free and fair elections and confidence in voting systems, Emmer wrote, “The opposite is true. Voting systems should be transparent.”

Crane said when clerks rebuff these requests` and prove that their voting systems work, election deniers attempt to put pressure on them and their county commissioners, trying to get commissioners to pull funding of voting systems and maintenance agreements.

Lawrence Norden, senior director of Elections and Government at the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law, said he can’t ascribe motive to elections officials who may have breached election security and given outsiders access to voting equipment, as Peters is accused of doing, but their actions and words are both concerning for faith in election systems and integrity of elections.

“So (if) somebody just doesn’t trust the system and therefore is not going to follow the rules and give access of their systems to people who may have very bad intentions, or it’s somebody who actually wants to not accept the election results if they’re not for the candidate that they want to win, those are both really big problems,” Norden said.

Some of the elections officials may just be inexperienced and therefore distrusting of the systems, he said, while others are working as part of a nationally coordinated effort to get election deniers in these positions.

Brennan Center researchers released a study in June noting that elec­tion offi­cials have been facing growing pres­sure to prior­it­ize partisan interests over a fair and demo­cratic process. They also have been tracking money spent on election official races in battleground states and the increased attention to secretary of state races across the country – an office that normally does not receive as much attention.

“The ques­tion of who ran and certi­fied our elec­tions has tradi­tion­ally been of little interest to most,” Ian Vandewalker and Norden wrote in their report. “That changed in 2020, when elec­tion offi­cials became the focus of a disin­form­a­tion campaign that was meant to under­mine faith in Amer­ican demo­cracy and cast doubt on elec­tion results. Today, polit­ical lead­ers in both parties have argued that the future of our demo­cracy depends on having the ‘right’  people in these offices, with many support­ers of Donald Trump contend­ing that the 2020 elec­tion should not have been certi­fied, and others (includ­ing the Bren­nan Center) arguing that if offi­cials had not been will­ing to stand up to polit­ical pres­sure, the elec­tion would have been sabot­aged.”

has indicated that a majority of Republican voters do not think Joe Biden’s presidency is legitimate, according to the Washington Post, and they believe Trump’s unfounded claims that the election was stolen — claims that Colorado’s secretary of state finds dangerous.

“We saw lies about the 2020 election nationally cause the insurrection leading to several members of the police force in DC that guard the Capitol, of course, losing their lives,” Griswold said. “And it’s the same lies that caused that violence we are seeing really pushing the efforts to suppress the vote, to destabilize election administration and then to also chip away at confidence in the electoral process. So that next time there is a Jan. 6 or an extreme candidate unwilling to accept the results of a race, it will be easier for them to take their positions.”

Colorado Republican Party Chairwoman Kristi Brown did not respond directly to questions, but in a statement said Griswold was the one undermining trust in elections with her partisanship.

“Colorado Republicans wholeheartedly believe that your right to vote is enshrined in our country’s founding documents and that casting your vote is the right of every citizen who wants to have a voice in our Republic,” Brown said. “I’ve been clear that the 2020 election is over and that we have to be focused on 2022 and building a better future for all Coloradans.”

Still, Colorado’s Republican elections officials are finding themselves battling misinformation and disinformation each day as they work to explain Colorado’s “gold standard” of elections and their security. Although Colorado is not a battleground state and its top officials are Democrats, a majority of its clerks are Republican.

GOP clerks’ confidence

For Larimer County Clerk and Recorder Angela Myers, there is no doubt that her county not only runs elections well but that voters can rest assured that the results are accurate. She said those tasked with overseeing elections should have prior experience and ensure they’re conducting elections in a way that shows no favoritism to any candidate or party.

“I’m confident in our processes … and the systems that do it,” the Republican clerk said. But like Broerman, she worries about public perception and tries to make herself available to answer questions and concerns.

Although Myers said she does not have the same concerns as the three county clerks or others who cast doubt on the elections in Colorado, if she did, she would not have gone about it in the way Peters and others are accused of doing.

“I would not have done anything in the dark of night,” Myers said. “My first call would have been to my attorney, second call to the press, third call to the parties. Certainly, there would have been a call in there to the Secretary of State’s Office. But it would not have been without being very, very public.”

“When you do something in the dark of night with the cameras off, it is very difficult to have credibility … whatever those results are,” she added.

Broerman said he understands the “passion” people have in making sure the results are right, particularly as many are concerned about the direction the country is headed, but in a county as large as El Paso – about 720,000 – it becomes a daunting task trying to explain to people on an individual level why they can trust the process. Then there are also people who are spreading misinformation and disinformation, making that job even harder.

“Often, I will take three and a half, four hours to go through all the facets of elections because it’s very detailed and very layered as to what we do and people come away blown away by all that goes into it, and I think by and large, people come away from that … they can know confidently that we got the results right, that we did ascertain the correct will of voters,” Broerman said.

Still, it baffles him that in places like El Paso where Trump won 53.5% of the vote, people are still questioning the election results.

“I made a decision a long time ago that I will always speak to the truth and I will not be taken off that path and to speak differently than the truth,” Broerman said, “even if it means that my political career is short.”

The www.arapahoevotes.com URL was changed to .

“Unlike .com domains, .gov domains can only be used by websites that have been thoroughly vetted to ensure they are the property of an official government office,” the Arapahoe County Elections Division said in a press release.

Colorado’s third most populous county says its elections site saw more than 128,000 visitors in the month before the 2020 election and another 27,000 in the month before last year’s off-year election. Voters can learn how to register and where to cast ballots on the site, and sample ballots, voter turnout data and election results will be posted there.

“The website also publishes in-depth information on elections transparency, including explainers on mail ballot voting, equipment testing and post-election audits,” the county said.

National elections security organizations, such as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, have been urging local governments to upgrade website URLs to .gov domains as a tactic to counter the efforts of “bad actors” trying to sow disinformation and promote distrust of elections, according to the release.

Arapahoe County appears to be the first metro area county to make the change, with other counties in and around Denver still using .com, .org and .us as suffixes for their elections websites.

But what Thomas — nor anyone else at that Dec. 7 meeting — mentioned was that those hands on the council belong exclusively to women, making this mobile home park-filled working-class community just north of Denver the first city in Colorado’s 146-year history to seat an all-female city council.

“I think it’s a great honor,” said Mayor Linda Montoya, who said she didn’t initially realize the historic milestone her city reached after the November election. “It’s awesome — I think it’s great.”

What happened in Federal Heights, a city of nearly 13,000 residents, is not unprecedented nationally. In November, Las Cruces N.M. made headlines when . A year earlier, the 

But University of Massachusetts political science professor Shannon Jenkins, who specializes in women in politics, said a city council made up entirely of women is “a pretty rare event still,” though she said it could lead to less confrontation and more cooperation at the local level.

“Women tend to approach their jobs a little differently,” Jenkins said. “They tend to focus on coalition building, consensus building and are less adversarial. The symbolism of having the first all-female city council is important.”

The male-free arrangement could place greater emphasis on issues that particularly matter to women, like housing, health care, mental health concerns and safety, said Lisa Calderon, executive director of Emerge Colorado, which helps get women elected to local offices.

“It presents a tremendous opportunity because city councils are closest to the ground,” Calderon said. “It’s a great opportunity to have an all-woman council be more receptive to the everyday issues people are facing. It’s remarkable and should be celebrated.”

Kevin Bommer, executive director of the Colorado Municipal League, said it’s hard to say how the women now leading Federal Heights might differ from an all-male or mixed-gender council.

“Most issues municipal leaders deal with are as free from gender identity as they are from partisan politics,” he said. “However, it is undeniable that there is a much greater likelihood of awareness of policy impacts on women, when they might exist, that you may not get with, say, an all-male council.”

Colorado, Bommer said, does pretty well when it comes to female representation in positions of power. Women hold a majority of House seats in the General Assembly, and according to a in April 2021, 44.4% of the state’s municipal political positions are held by women, which ranks the state third in the nation in that category.

Colorado does appreciably better than the nation as a whole, which the Center for American Women and Politics pegged at just 30.5% of all municipal seats held by women.

“It����ap common to see women as mayors – currently 14 of 38 in the Denver metro area – and also frequently elected to city council or town board seats,” Bommer said.

It’s been a long time coming. Just 34 years ago, Steamboat Springs became Colorado’s . Julie Green, known in 1988 by her married name Julie Schwall, was one of four women on the seven-person council.

Green, now 70, did her best to balance her job and home life with her civic obligations as a councilwoman. She remembers what should have been short trips to the grocery store turning into marathon conversation sessions with constituents, endlessly frustrating her children.

“I had young children — they begged me not to do it again,” Green said. “I did my city council work at night after the kids went to bed.”

She remembers her time on Steamboat’s city council as “an extremely friendly experience,” where she and her colleagues dealt with typical issues that often confront civic leaders: whether to allow Walmart into town and how to increase employment in the ski resort town during the summer.

“I don’t know if priorities would have been different if it had been a male-majority council,” Green said.

Doris Peterson said women are generally more caring and collaborative in their approach to things, but she sees her job as one of the seven women on the Federal Heights City Council in a more practical light.

“To me, gender did not matter,” said Peterson, who is 81 and moved to a senior mobile home park in the city in 2016 after her husband died. “Everyone who became a council member is dedicated to doing what they can do to better their city.”

Peterson served on Federal Heights’ planning and zoning commission for two years before being convinced by former Mayor Dan Dick, who is a neighbor, to run for a seat on the council.

“I’ve almost always been involved in something helpful,” she said.

Federal Heights’ city manager is also a woman. Jacqueline Halburnt said she is “glad we can pave the way” but added that there wasn’t a coalition of women who ran together — “it just turned out that way in Federal Heights.”

Rather matter-of-factly, she said reporting to all women in her role as city manager makes “no difference to me.”

“I implement what the majority wants, whoever they may be,” Halburnt said.

Sarah Dawn Pearlstein, who moved to the city just four years ago, said being on a council with women only “breaks that barrier” and is a “big deal for women,” but she said she will keep her focus on the business of Federal Heights.

“I just want to do a good job for the people,” Pearlstein said.

Last week, Griswold, a Democrat, said Peters, a Republican, could return to her duties only if she agreed to certify documents with new election security protocols that would have restricted her authority and required her to repudiate a statement she made about getting “those machines so that they are transparent to the people and they are not able to do what they’re designed to do.”

But Peters refused, her legal defense fund calling the protocols a “gag order,” and instead announced her intent to run for re-election. Griswold filed the lawsuit on Tuesday morning.

Voters in Mesa County will be deciding on local and state ballot issues and races in the 2022 midterm elections, including for governor, attorney general and U.S. Senate and U.S. House. The primary election is scheduled for June 28 and the general election on Nov. 8.

A judge previously barred Peters and Deputy Clerk Belinda Knisley from involvement in the 2021 election after Griswold sued in August alleging that Peters had allowed someone access to an authorized elections area during a Dominion Voting Systems software update, and passwords for the equipment were later posted online. Peters is also the subject of multiple complaints and is facing a grand jury investigation into allegations of a security breach.

“Every eligible Coloradan – Republican, Democrat, and Independent alike – has the right to make their voice heard in safe and secure elections,” Griswold said in a statement. “As Clerk Peters is unwilling to commit to following election security protocols, I am taking action to ensure that Mesa County voters have the elections they deserve.”

In a statement through her legal defense fund, Peters said she would not back down.

“Demanding someone recant their beliefs, especially beliefs for government transparency or else be punished is something we would expect to see in North Korea, China, or even medieval Europe — not the United States of America,” she said.

Because Peters is elected, only a judge can remove her from serving as the county’s designated elections official. Knisley — who is still on administrative suspension from work and is facing criminal charges for allegedly entering a county building unlawfully — and Second Chief Deputy Clerk Julie Fisher are also named in the lawsuit.

Last year, former Republican Secretary of State Wayne Williams was appointed to temporarily serve in the role until everything for the 2021 election was finalized, which the secretary of state’s office said is now expected in early February.

For the 2022 election, Griswold, with the support of the county commissioners, has requested that a judge appoint Mesa County Director of Elections Brandi Bantz to serve as the designated election official for 2022 in Mesa County. She plans to then appoint Williams and Mesa County Treasurer Sheila Reiner, also a Republican, as election supervisors to help Bantz.

Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein and state Attorney General Phil Weiser made the announcement about convening the grand jury in a news release early Thursday, saying in the joint statement that the grand jury accepted the case Wednesday.

Although Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, a Republican, was not named in the release, local, state and federal authorities have been investigating for months a possible security breach in the clerk’s office after Peters and others allegedly allowed an unauthorized person access to elections equipment during a Dominion Voting Systems software update in May. Passwords were posted online in August. It’s unclear how many people are under investigation.

In November, the attorney general’s and district attorney’s offices confirmed they, along with the FBI, conducted a search in Peters’ home related to the alleged election system breach and disputed claims by Peters that her home and those of her friends were violently “raided.”

A grand jury in Colorado often is made up of a panel of about 12 people, nine of whom must find probable cause before they can indict someone. The standard is lower than what is used for a conviction in criminal trials. Prosecutors present evidence and witnesses to the grand jury, but the proceedings are kept secret. Even those under investigation are “dealt with privately to ensure fairness,” according to Weiser.

“The investigation will be thorough and guided by the facts and the law,” the joint statement read. “More information will be made available when the prosecutors are ethically and legally permitted to provide additional details. To maintain the impartiality of the investigation, we have no further comment at this time.”

An FBI representative did not return a request for comment Thursday about the status of the federal investigation.

On the same day as the grand jury announcement, Peters, who has made baseless claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election, called a news conference in front of the county justice center to announce she is running for re-election.

Peters was introduced by Sherronna Bishop, who previously said in November as part of the criminal investigation into the possible breach and is a former campaign manager for U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert.

“You are the people who elected me, not the secretary of state … not Joe Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, not the grand jury that is being called against me to try to prove I’ve done something wrong. I’ve never done anything wrong, and it’s going to show that,” Peters said.

A judge had barred Peters and Deputy Clerk Belinda Knisley from overseeing the 2021 election after the secretary of state’s office in August sued Peters in Mesa County District Court.

The secretary of state’s office asked Peters this week to sign a document that placed limits on what she can do for the 2022 elections if she wants to return as the county’s designated election official, including repudiating a statement she made about Dominion Voting Systems machines. But Peters rejected the offer, her legal defense fund said Wednesday.

Peters also faces an investigation with the Colorado Independent Ethics Commission as well as a complaint that the secretary of state’s office filed in the Colorado Office of Administrative Courts accusing her of violating campaign finance law by alleging that she solicited donations without filing as a candidate for election and that she accepted gifts over the legal limit.

Griswold, a Democrat, issued the election order and “certification and attestation of compliance” on Monday, giving the Republican clerk three days to agree to the conditions, as .

The document states that if Peters fails or refuses to any part of the order, the secretary of state’s office could seek a court order to remove Peters as the designated election official and appoint a replacement.

Mesa County is expected to complete all of its work related to the 2021 election by the end of the month, including publishing results from a hand recount and posting ballot images online, which means Peters would be able to resume her elections duties further legal action is taken.

In October, a Mesa County judge barred Peters and Deputy Clerk Belinda Knisley from overseeing the 2021 election in response to a lawsuit that the secretary of state’s office filed in August. It alleged that Peters, with the help of Knisley and one of the county’s election managers, Sandra Brown, allowed an unauthorized man access to a secure area in the county elections office on May 25 during an update to the Dominion Voting Systems software, and that a QAnon conspiracy theory leader published passwords from the voting systems online in August.

Peters has been held up as a prominent figure among election conspiracy theorists who claim the 2020 election was stolen. Knisley is facing criminal charges related to allegedly entering the county offices after being placed on administrative leave over another workplace investigation. She has .

“Clerk Peters’ actions constituted one of the nation’s first insider threats where an official who was elected to uphold free, fair, and secure elections risked the integrity of the election system in an effort to prove unfounded conspiracy theories,” said Annie Orloff, spokesperson for Griswold’s office, in an email.

The order would require Peters or any deputy clerk to get approval for election-related decisions from the secretary of state’s office and allow the office access to video surveillance of voting equipment at all times. It also prohibits Peters from being near voting equipment without supervision, from using the state’s voter registration system until she has completed training and from granting access to the voting equipment rooms without written approval, among other restrictions. Additionally, Peters would be required to submit electronic logs daily for key swipes into the Elections Division to the secretary of state’s office as well as weekly progress reports on elections matters.

And it would require Peters to to “repudiate, retract and disavow” statements she made related to her “willingness to compromise Mesa County’s voting system equipment,” including on a Jan. 6 Facebook Live broadcast in which she said, “We’ve got to get those machines so that they are transparent to the people and they are not able to do what they’re designed to do.”

The Mesa County Board of County Commissioners is also asking for Peters to sign a separate attestation about complying with election protocols, ensuring employment protections of elections workers and complying with the county’s contract with Dominion Voting Systems.

Mesa County Commissioner Cody Davis said on Tuesday that he would be shocked if Peters signs the secretary of state’s attestation.

However, Davis said he’s concerned about comments Peters made online last week about getting rid of voting equipment, with Davis saying it could cost a quarter of a million dollars to have to replace the equipment again. He’s also worried about losing employees so close to an election.

Through her legal defend fund on Wednesday, Peters said the statement she’s being asked to reject isn’t about voter fraud, but about a demand for transparency.

“Please name one time in the history of the world in which the side demanding you ‘repudiate’ your beliefs, especially beliefs for  transparency, in exchange for return of your rights, have been the good guys?” she said, adding that she will “never accept this  ‘keep quiet, repudiate transparency, and have your rights back offer.’”

The clerk is still the subject of complaints in the Colorado Office of Administrative Courts, alleging violations of campaign finance law over allegations of soliciting money for a re-election campaign without an active campaign committee filing and accepting gifts over the limits allowed, including from Mike Lindell, founder and CEO of MyPillow and election conspiracy theorist.

Another ethics complaint related to the same allegations being reviewed by the Colorado Independent Ethics Commission is pending. And the original lawsuit filed by the secretary of state’s office is awaiting further action after Peters’ attorneys filed counterclaims against Griswold over Peters’ removal as the designated election official and allegations that elections records were getting deleted during routine maintenance.

State and federal criminal investigations into Peters and the clerk’s office related to a possible security breach are also ongoing.

A lawsuit filed by the county commissioners in December against Peters for failing to attest to a document signed by the board for an election services contract extension was later .

“The best case scenario, given where we’re at with Clerk Peters, would be for her to resign and let us appoint a new clerk and recorder who does not have the legal trouble with the ethics commission, with potential charge coming from the DA, from the feds,” Davis said. “She has an incredible amount of baggage right now and it doesn’t bode well for the community to have her in there as clerk and recorder.”

Davis said he doesn’t anticipate her resignation or signature on the documents, so he expects another attempt will be made to get a judge to bar her from overseeing the next election until the investigations are complete.

But the commissioner said the focus for the board isn’t whether Peters is guilty or not, rather that Mesa voters can trust their elections. The board is reviewing options, and if a significant amount of the community still doesn’t trust the results of the 2020 election, Davis said commissioners may want to go back to that presidential election and apply some of the processes they took in 2021 such as the hand recounts and ballot imaging to prove votes weren’t changed.

County clerks across the state finally have to say, enough is enough.

As misinformation and disinformation has circulated about the accuracy and integrity of our elections, our county clerks have patiently tried to answer questions and educate on how the election process actually works.

Now, a fringe group is calling on our volunteer citizen canvass boards, who ultimately certify election results, to refuse to do so, even before clerks have been able to present them with a shred of election-related data. This call exposes the reality of these election conspiracy groups for what they are: ideologically driven people with no interest in facts.

Over the last year, clerks across the state have had to deal with death threats, physical threats, and menacing. Grifters and bad actors have taken precious resources in our clerks’ offices and even caused some clerks to spend taxpayer dollars to retrofit their offices to safeguard their staff from harm. During this time, clerks have diligently followed up on each one of the questions and requests for information they have received. Clerks have taken time away from other duties to explain the process, given tours and met with anyone who asks, all in an attempt to help their community members better understand how they have been misinformed about the way elections work.

Now, 12 months after the last general election and on the heels of our most recent election, these election conspiracy devotees continue to spread disinformation, either because they are making money on the grift or because they refuse to listen to facts or deal in any reality that does not conform to the fantasy world they have created where election officials can single-handedly alter election results as part of some kind of collective national scam. During the 2018 General Election, which many of these people also believe was stolen, I’ll note for you that I was the Arapahoe County Clerk and Recorder. I lost that election, and while I wasn’t happy with the result, it was an accurate, fair, and secure election. So much for wielding the power to single-handedly alter an election.

While all of this nonsense has swirled around our county clerks, other elected officials have remained oddly silent. It would seem they have a genuine stake in the results of the elections, as their ability to govern is rooted first and foremost in the free and fair elections that put them in office. It����ap likely they don’t want to draw the attention and the ire of the election conspiracy types. Across the country, we have seen them harass people, post their personal information online and in some cases threaten bodily harm.

Your county clerks, on the other hand, don’t have the luxury of silence. You elected them to run accurate and secure elections, among their many other important duties. I can assure you that your county clerks are doing just that. In fact, they are running the best, most emulated elections in the country. While no election is perfect, you can and should trust that elections in Colorado are both accessible and secure.

And while we’re talking about county clerks, let����ap remember who they are. They are your neighbors, your fellow church members and your high school sports boosters. They live down the block and some of you might have known them since grade school. As part of their role to run transparent elections, they recruit other members of your community to come in and check their work. They ask for volunteers, again who you know from down the street, to monitor their efforts and report out to you on what they saw.

Our free and fair elections are the cornerstone of our democracy. There isn’t a single county clerk running elections in 2021 who doesn’t understand that and take the heavy responsibility with deadly seriousness. But they can’t do it alone. They need you to stand up and be counted in this moment. Will you side with facts, reason and your community members? Or will you help to tear our elections down? Will you stand with clerks who are trying to push back on this misinformation and disinformation and set the record straight? Or will you be silent while this small group of individuals committed to public service and running fair and secure elections takes a beating? The time has come to choose. Your hard-working county clerks have made their choice. Time for you to make yours.

Matt Crane is the executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, a former clerk and recorder for Arapahoe County, and an election subject matter expert.

But after a two-hour-plus executive session, the board of health was unable to come up with a plan about what to do next. It is scheduled to meet again Friday — the same day a federal judge has called all parties in the case back to his courtroom.

In the meantime, a new school board is less than three weeks away from taking over the 64,000-student Douglas County School District. The Nov. 2 election was won by a slate of four conservative candidates who oppose mask mandates, and they will be the majority on the seven-member board.

One of those candidates, Becky Myers, said she doesn’t know yet what she and her colleagues will be able to do about the ongoing litigation over masks, given a federal judge’s decision last month to halt implemention of Douglas County’s public health order.

“I don’t think our hands are totally tied yet,” Myers said Wednesday. “Hopefully the seven of us are going to work together for what’s best for the kids.”

The new board of education will be sworn in Nov. 29.

Board president Doug Benevento said the health department has three choices: rescind its order and issue a new one that passes muster with the court, modify the order in a way that doesn’t trigger a federal civil rights complaint or continue trying to defend in court the existing order as written.

“We want to make sure that all students have accommodation for all their needs,” Benevento said Wednesday.

To what extent accommodation should be offered to students in the middle of a pandemic is at the heart of the federal complaint lodged against the health department last month by the Douglas County School District on behalf of nine students with disabilities. The district argued that without universal masking, those students faced an elevated risk of catching COVID-19 and suffering severe illness or dying.

����aps among those attending Wednesday’s meeting highlighted the basic fissures in the debate.

Centennial resident Miles Cortez, who has a child in Douglas County schools, encouraged the board of health to continue its legal fight over the mask exemption.

“There’s a way to allow these kids to access their public education without masking 64,000 kids,” he said.

He was countered by J.B. Poplawski, a Parker father of two, who told the board of health that it wasn’t just about preventing pediatric cases of COVID-19.

“We want our kids protected because we want to be protected,” he said. “Parents are dying too.”

The battle over masks in schools in Colorado has taken center stage in Douglas County, a conservative suburban county that has spent much of the past 20 months of the pandemic resisting public health orders from the state and the Tri-County Health Department.

A Tri-County directive in late August mandating masks for all students and workers in the district spurred Douglas County to break away and form its own health agency. One of its first actions was passing a public health order Oct. 8 permitting parents to exempt their children from having to cover their faces at school.

After the school district filed suit, U.S. District Judge John Kane issued a temporary restraining order halting the county’s mask exemption policy, ruling that it violated the plaintiff students’ civil rights under the Americans With Disabilities Act. On Monday, he extended the restraining order until Nov. 22, while scheduling another hearing on the matter for Friday morning.

The school district is still seeking a preliminary injunction in the matter.

Myers, a former Douglas County teacher, said she has heard from many parents angry over Kane’s ruling. She said she understands their concern that masks might negatively affect their children’s ability to learn.

“I can’t imagine teaching with a mask on,” she said.

In a report the for European countries, the agency concluded that “children and adolescents in schools are not considered primary drivers of transmission” of COVID-19.

The agency went on to say that although “precautions must be taken to control the spread of COVID-19 in the community … a balance must be struck between imposing such measures and ensuring that children are able to continue learning and socializing to the greatest extent possible.”

On masks specifically, the report stated that interim guidance from WHO recommends that children under age 6 should not be masked and for those 6 to 11 years old, “a risk-based approach should be taken, considering community transmission levels, ability to maintain physical distancing and ventilation.”

It did note that more contagious variants of the virus could alter that risk analysis.

As of Tuesday, the seven-day cumulative incidence rate for COVID-19 in Douglas County was 278.6 per 100,000 people, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers high community transmission and merits the use of masks. Meanwhile, 96.7% of intensive care beds are occupied in the county, according to data from Tri-County.

But Tri-County data also shows that only one child under age 18 has died of COVID-19 in Douglas County since the pandemic struck in March 2020. And in the past month, just four kids in the county have been admitted to hospitals for coronavirus infection.

Flash forward to October. The chief of police, a department veteran for more than three decades, retires following a stinging report about workplace culture under his watch. A day later, Westminster’s city manager steps down.

And last week, voters bounced nearly half of those on City Council out of the job.

All of these developments in less than a year have some wondering: Is Westminster a city in crisis or is this just democracy’s messy machinery on full throttle?

“This is the most unsettled I’ve ever seen Westminster,” said Bill Christopher, a former long-time city manager who has lived here for more than half a century. “We’ve been a pretty stable community but it’s in a state of flux now.”

Debbie Teter, a 20-year resident who helped spearhead the battle against Westminster’s high water costs, said disenchantment among the electorate has been steadily mounting.

“It feels like it finally burst,” she said of the frustration that has been building in this city of 116,000 northwest of Denver. “Westminster is in a state of turmoil — and now it’s rolling through some changes and that’s good.”

But Anita Seitz, who on Monday night stepped down from the mayoral seat she has held since Herb Atchison resigned the post in May, said while the city has hit a rough patch of late she doesn’t see challenges with  its aging water infrastructure and troubles at the police department as signifying some intertwined municipal collapse.

“I think these (things) are pretty discrete — correlation is not the same as causational,” Seitz said during an interview at city hall. “It’s a large organization and things can happen at the same time.”

Jon Voelz, a councilman who also lost his seat in the Nov. 2 election, said he feels he’s leaving the city in better shape than he found it when he first took office in early 2019. Financial reserves are up, the open space fund is flush and the city is trying to shore up a water system that is decades old and in disrepair, he said.

“I think there’s a group of people that want us to think there’s chaos in the city,” Voelz said. “I’m optimistic about Westminster.”

Communication breakdown

A big clue to Westminster’s future may be found in last week’s election results.

On the one hand, voters brought back Nancy McNally as mayor — eight years after she had last held that position. Bruce Baker, a former conservative councilman, also won a spot back on council.

Yet, two progressive candidates new to politics also won: Sarah Nurmela, an urban planner, and Obi Ezeadi, the son of Nigerian immigrants who on Monday became only the second Black person to sit on the Westminster city council.

“Now we have an opportunity to re-set,” Ezeadi said in an interview with The Denver Post. “People want to trust their government. How do we steer the ship now?”

A product manager in the tech field, Ezeadi said he “modernized outreach” to Westminster voters by meeting them in person and through various digital channels. He placed a special emphasis on canvassing low-income, minority neighborhoods in the southern part of the city, listing his passions as “justice, innovation, equity and transparent government” on his campaign website.

Winning the most votes out of any candidate in the at-large race — with 13,338 — Ezeadi attributed his success at the ballot box last week to support from a segment of Westminster that historically hasn’t been a prominent part of the city’s political mix.

“We door-knocked them, we texted them, we called them,” he said. “We didn’t ignore these communities — we made them feel included.”

Ezeadi said he doesn’t feel like Westminster is necessarily in turmoil, but he does think the city needs to be more open and straightforward with its residents in order to regain their trust. That includes an intense, out-of-the-gate focus on finding the best police chief and city manager for Westminster.

“I’m going to be leaning hard on transparency in all areas,” he said.

Lack of communication from the city was the complaint McNally heard the most on the campaign trail this past year, she said.

“A lot of people feel they don’t know how to be heard,” she said. “They felt like they kept hitting roadblocks.”

Many residents were unhappy with a decision by the city at the beginning of the year to suddenly stop emailing weekly updates about goings-on in Westminster, she said. And the coronavirus pandemic, with its restrictions on in-person gatherings, only made civic discourse more disjointed and fragmented, McNally added.

“People couldn’t get to the dais, they couldn’t ask their questions,” she said of city council meetings, where audience members were just voices over a phone line or internet connection. “I could see people’s frustration — so I jumped in.”

There are other pressures bearing down on Westminster that will test how well the city’s elected leaders can collaborate with one another and communicate with residents. Next month, the new council will be deciding on a master plan and rezoning request for the central portion of a controversial development proposal known as the Uplands.

The council will focus on a 150-acre parcel at the corner of West 84th Avenue and Federal Boulevard that for decades has been farmland fronting an arresting view of the foothills to the west. The project, which calls for up to 2,350 homes and more than 100,000 square feet of office and commercial space, has generated intense opposition from those who say it’s too dense and urban for the area.

Karen Ray, who helped form a group called Save the Farm more than two years ago to oppose Uplands, said she’s been frustrated trying to get information from Westminster about the project.

“Yes, it’s a city in turmoil,” she said. “It’s been a government unresponsive to public concerns.”

‘Show us what you got’

But Seitz, the former mayor, said development pressure is not unique to Westminster — especially in a metro area that has experienced historically low housing inventory and skyrocketing real estate prices — just as police reform, water issues and city staff resignations are happening in other places too.

“People want to have affordable housing but they don’t want to have growth,” she said. “There is nostalgia for a time when there was more stability.”

Voelz admits that the city didn’t always do a great job communicating with its residents through the pandemic, but said he didn’t hear that as a top concern among the voters he met with as he campaigned this year. As Westminster’s first openly gay council member who served on the city’s Inclusivity Board before joining the council, Voelz said he worked hard on making sure all voices were heard while he was in office.

“I think we’re going through a transition,” he said.

And it’s a transition that better be handled deftly by Westminster’s next slate of elected leaders, Ezeadi said. Voters will only give the new council so much time to prove that it is putting the city on the right course.

“The people are asking, ‘Show us what you got,'” he said. “I think the city is not currently in chaos. But if this council can’t work together, it will be.”

Voters on Tuesday put into office conservative or moderate candidates in three open seats, delivering what Juan Marcano, one of the more outspoken progressive members of Aurora’s 11-member council, called a “gut punch” to those hoping city leadership was on an inexorable leftward tack.

Gone — at least for the next two years — are any meaningful police reform efforts, legal defense measures for immigrants or ordinances allowing on-site consumption of marijuana, he said. In their place, Marcano said, Mayor Mike Coffman’s proposal to ban urban camping will likely re-emerge and prevail in 2022.

“Our middle class is disappearing, housing is unattainable for far too many people, and wages haven’t kept up with the cost of living,” said Marcano, who was swept into office in 2019 amid social justice and immigrant rights protests at city hall. “I know a majority of our residents want to see a change, and our progressive candidates had the will to enact that change, but unfortunately the minority that showed up to vote elected a majority body of the same mindset that created those problems to begin with.”

Aurora has been dominated by conservatives for at least a half-century and unfortunately, that will continue for at least another two years.”

Councilman Curtis Gardner, who was not on the ballot this year, said the reason for the electorate’s mood change was more straightforward.

“I think the message from voters on Tuesday was that they want City Council to stick to municipal issues — land use, roads, public safety, things like that,” he said. “In the last few years, we’ve spent more time on national issues and I think our residents want us to focus on what impacts them every day.”

And at the top of the list of concerns for residents is Aurora’s spiking crime numbers over the last two years, especially when it comes to gun violence, Gardner said. More people were injured in shootings in the first half of this year than in all of 2019, Aurora police data show.

The crime surge has come at a time during which Aurora found itself at the forefront of social justice demonstrations nationally, with protests over police treatment of Elijah McClain — a Black man who died after police apprehended him and paramedics injected him with a sedative — erupting into violence and a shooting that injured a man.

“Public safety is a core function of government at all levels so I’m not surprised to see voters elect candidates that placed a high emphasis on public safety,” Gardner said.

The two victorious at-large candidates on Tuesday, Air Force vet Danielle Jurinsky and business owner Dustin Zvonek, both highlighted in their campaigns the importance of public safety, while featuring endorsements from the city’s police and fire department unions on their websites and in their mailers.

“They had a very clear message about public safety,” said JulieMarie Shepherd Macklin, a political science instructor at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a lifelong Aurora resident who keeps a close eye on city politics. “I think Tuesday night was a vote saying we want to get back to issues that are important to us in our everyday lives.”

But the election results weren’t just about voters strategically attempting to re-set the political complexion of the council, Shepherd Macklin said. There were larger historical trends in play too, as was evident in the poor showing by Democrats nationwide last week.

“An off-year election, after a presidential election, tends to favor the out party,” she said.

All was not lost for the progressive wing of Aurora’s council. Ruben Medina, who was backed by labor unions, conservation groups and an immigrant rights organization in Ward III, declared victory Friday over opponent Jono Scott, after taking a late 104-vote lead out of more than 8,000 ballots cast.

And no sitting liberal council member actually lost a seat on Tuesday. Crystal Murillo, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, was re-elected to her Ward I seat after voters first put her on the council with two other progressive candidates in 2017.

Murillo told The Denver Post she was still processing the election results and wasn’t prepared to talk about her next term. Shepherd Macklin said Murillo was likely helped by her incumbency, especially in an election with such low voter turnout.

“These are relatively low information races — name identification goes a long way,” she said.

So what comes next for the Aurora City Council as the new council members prepare to take their seats?

For the mayor, whose term expires in 2023, Tuesday’s results were a “repudiation of the ‘defund the police’ mentality” that swept through the country following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer last year.

“The election result means that I will be able to put forward an agenda that will continue the necessary reforms for our police department while supporting a law enforcement strategy that addresses our rising crime rate,” Coffman said.

The mayor also plans to tackle Aurora’s transportation challenges and resurrect a proposal to “provide safe alternative locations for those living in encampments that are away from our schools, neighborhoods and our businesses.” The council in August turned down a measure to ban urban camping via the slimmest of margins — a 5-5 tie.

But Marcano, who calls Coffman’s camping ban idea “ill-conceived,” hasn’t given up hope that the city council has moved past its decades-long conservative makeup to eventually give Aurora the “progressive majority it deserves.” In Colorado’s most ethnically diverse city where one in five residents is foreign born, the “days are numbered” for those unwilling to recognize the profound shifts happening in the city, Marcano said.

“I believe that tipping point will be upon us soon as the inequity in our city continues to grow as a result of a continuation of their policies,” he said.