{"id":23695,"date":"2025-02-06T13:33:57","date_gmt":"2025-02-06T20:33:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-county-clerks-reflect-after-difficult-election-year\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:40:51","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:40:51","slug":"colorado-county-clerks-reflect-after-difficult-election-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-county-clerks-reflect-after-difficult-election-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado county clerks reflect after difficult election year"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Montezuma
Montezuma County Clerk Kim Percell (left) and Dolores County Clerk Lana Hancock at the Colorado County Clerks Association Winter Conference in Colorado Springs. (Lynn Bartels\/Courtesy photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Colorado county clerks attended the Colorado County Clerks Association Winter Conference in Colorado Springs last week. The conference was a way for clerks to encourage each other and process the 2024 election cycle \u201cdespite the threats, nastiness and misinformation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI love the clerk\u2019s conference. It\u00a0is a\u00a0valuable\u00a0resource for me,\u201d Montezuma County Clerk Kim Percell told The<\/em> Journal<\/em> on Wednesday. \u201cWe are able to connect directly with the Secretary of State\u2019s office, the Department of Revenue, other county recording departments and vendors.\u00a0It provides a place to discuss the current and proposed legislative statutes, along with best practices or things that just don\u2019t work the way they were supposed to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Percell added that being able to spend time with the \u201cclerk community\u201d made the conference especially special.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, the true treasures are the hallway collaborations between people, the sharing of new ideas and the opportunity to let go of the stress and reenergize with a little love shared from our Clerk community,\u201d Percell said.<\/p>\n

Testimonials from clerks across the state noted the way clerks supported each other \u201cdespite county size or political party\u201d throughout the 2024 election year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe story of 2024 should be one of solidarity and character. Throughout it all, we supported each other despite county size or political party. We responded, we adapted and we got the job done,\u201d Molly Fitzpatrick, Boulder County clerk, said in her farewell speech as the president of the Colorado County Clerks Association.<\/p>\n

The association swore in its new president, Jackson County Clerk Hayle Johnson, at the conference.<\/p>\n

In a press release, Percell shared that one of the best parts of the conference was a workshop held by Hilary Rudy, the deputy elections director for the Secretary of State\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n

During Rudy\u2019s workshop, clerks were invited to share what was on their minds regarding rules and regulations in place.<\/p>\n

\u201cClerks didn\u2019t hold back, questioning some of the rules they thought made no sense or were just plain busy work and making suggestions for changes,\u201d Lynn Bartels, former communications director at the Colorado Secretary of State\u2019s Office, said in a press release.<\/p>\n

Clerks even had the opportunity to speak on the \u201crocky relationship\u201d they have with Democrat Secretary of State Jena Griswold. Griswold took office in 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe open communication with the SOS related to specific headache topics from the 2024 election offered a glimpse that they were both aware and interested in the issues that the clerks had,\u201d Percell said in the news release. \u201cSometimes being heard is the best way to mend frayed relations. It might take time \u2026 to recover the trust.\u201d<\/p>\n

The majority of counties in Colorado have less than 10,000 voters. According to the press release, 15,436 ballots were cast in Montezuma County last November, with 36,175 in La Plata County. For comparison, there were 369,452 votes cast in Denver County.<\/p>\n

The summer conference will take place in Burlington in June. It will primarily be hosted by Eastern Plains clerks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Montezuma County Clerk Kim Percell and clerks from neighboring counties attended<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23696,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,266,28,60,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-23695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-election","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78221,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23695\/revisions\/78221"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23695"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=23695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}