{"id":29336,"date":"2024-02-07T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-07T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/trump-eligibility-case-has-brought-new-pressures-and-threats-to-colorados-election-workers\/"},"modified":"2024-02-07T19:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-02-07T19:00:00","slug":"trump-eligibility-case-has-brought-new-pressures-and-threats-to-colorados-election-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/trump-eligibility-case-has-brought-new-pressures-and-threats-to-colorados-election-workers\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump eligibility case has brought new pressures and threats to Colorado\u2019s election workers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The
The Mesa County Elections Clerk and Recorder\u2019s office in Grand Junction, Colorado, seen here on Jan. 21, 2022. (Hart Van Denburg\/CPR News)<\/span>Hart Van Denburg\/CPR News<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt does raise our profile \u2013 not in a good way, for bad things to happen,\u201d said Chaffee County Clerk Lori Mitchell, a Democrat. \u201cI think the threat environment is very real and we take it very seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court hears oral arguments Thursday over whether Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, the so-called Insurrection Clause, applies to Trump. In December 2023, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled it does, disqualifying him from the state\u2019s upcoming GOP primary. A decision from the nation\u2019s highest court will most likely either put him back on the ballot in Colorado or take the unprecedented step of barring him from running nationwide.<\/p>\n

Speaking to CPR News at the clerk\u2019s winter gathering in January, Mitchell wasn\u2019t willing to delve too much into her thoughts on the case, noting that clerks will move forward with whatever the Justices decide.<\/p>\n

Counties have already printed their ballots for the March 5 presidential primary, with Trump\u2019s name on them. What\u2019s in doubt right now, is whether votes for him will ultimately be counted.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of just a little bit above us,\u201d Mitchell said, adding that the situation does create more pressure. \u201cBut I think that\u2019s making us really focus and be better, and we want the public to know that we\u2019re going to be ready, and they\u2019re going to be able to vote free and fairly.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court case is Colorado\u2019s biggest election controversy, but not its first<\/div>\n

Colorado has become the tip of the spear for a national effort to use the Constitution to keep the Republican front-runner off the presidential ballot. Groups opposed to Trump have filed similar challenges to his eligibility in numerous states, only to see nearly all of them fail on various grounds.<\/p>\n

Colorado is the only state to hold a full evidentiary hearing on the issue and to send it up the courts to the point where it arrived on the Supreme Court\u2019s doorstep.<\/p>\n

But being the test case has put the state\u2019s officials in a uniquely precarious situation. In the days after the ruling, the state\u2019s Supreme Court justices faced numerous threats. And now local election officials are feeling the strain too.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs soon as we can get clarity to that and move past that, then I think we\u2019ll be in a much better space,\u201d said Matt Crane, the head of the Colorado Clerks Association, which isn\u2019t taking a position on the case. He said election administrators are on high alert should the situation lead to threats. The clerks stepped up security for their recent conference in Colorado Springs.<\/p>\n

\u201cColorado is towards the top of the food chain in terms of concerns over political violence and threats to election officials,\u201d said Crane. \u201cI think that lawsuit has helped drive a lot of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crane, who is also a former Republican county clerk, said this case is just the latest way in which Colorado has found itself a target of anger and distrust from some of Trump\u2019s supporters who falsely believe the 2020 election was stolen.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the people who lie about elections, and grift about those lies, are centered here in Colorado,\u201d he observed. \u201cA lot of the Dominion lie started here.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Colorado-based podcaster and right-wing activist helped originate the widespread conspiracy theory that Dominion Voting Systems, which is headquartered in Denver, colluded to flip the election for President Joe Biden.<\/p>\n

Additionally, the U.S. Election Integrity Plan, a grassroots organization that seeks to uncover fraud in the 2020 election, is headquartered in Colorado Springs. In Mesa County, former clerk Tina Peters is scheduled to go on trial this summer for allegedly breaching the security of the county\u2019s election equipment on a hunt for evidence of fraud.<\/p>\n

However, even though Crane said he thinks Trump\u2019s actions and false claims around the 2020 election were reprehensible, he doesn\u2019t support removing the former president from the state\u2019s primary ballot.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe hasn\u2019t been convicted and I\u2019m certainly not a lawyer or a legal scholar in that regard, but he hasn\u2019t been charged with anything\u201d that meets the definition of insurrection, said Crane. \u201cI think there has to be some kind of due process that\u2019s involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

A federal grand jury indicted Trump in August 2023 on four charges stemming from his efforts to stay in power, including conspiracy against the rights of citizens and obstruction of an official proceeding. This week, an appeals court rejected Trump\u2019s claim of broad presidential immunity in that case.<\/p>\n

Colorado election officials have mixed opinions on what the Supreme Court should do. Republican Fremont County Clerk Justin Grantham believes it would be best for the country to keep Trump on the ballot and let voters decide.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s their election, it\u2019s their race. We\u2019re a government by the people, so the people, if they want Trump on the ballot, then put \u2019em on the ballot,\u201d said Grantham.<\/p>\n

Grantham said numerous Republicans in his very conservative part of the state have approached him to reiterate that their vote for Trump \u201cbetter count.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said they mistakenly believe that as clerk he\u2019s personally responsible for the names that appear on the ballot. \u201cAnd that\u2019s absolutely not the case,\u201d Grantham said.<\/p>\n

Logan County Clerk Pam Bacon, also a Republican, hasn\u2019t fielded too many questions about the case so far, but \u201ca few had some concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n

She is worried that with the intense media coverage the case is receiving, both locally and nationally, the situation could impact voter turnout for the upcoming election, with Republicans and Unaffiliated voters not turning in their ballots if they believe their vote won\u2019t count.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, with the spotlight on Colorado elections, Bacon believes those overseeing the vote are prepared to redouble their efforts to ensure the election goes smoothly.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe try to be as transparent as possible with giving our citizens the information and the tools that they need to feel comfortable to cast their ballot,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

While a lot of clerks understandably don\u2019t want to be front and center with their personal opinions on the Trump ballot case, the state\u2019s top election official, Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold, has taken an active role in the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do think the Colorado Supreme Court got it right. Donald Trump engaged in insurrection,\u201d said Griswold.<\/p>\n

She filed a brief with the court arguing that Trump was rightly disqualified \u2013 and that the lower court judge erred when she found that Section 3 doesn\u2019t clearly apply to the presidency. She will be seated in the courtroom for oral arguments Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI fundamentally do not believe there should be loopholes in the Constitution putting the president above the law,\u201d said Griswold. She added that allowing Trump to be on the ballot doesn\u2019t set a good precedent.<\/p>\n

\u201cDonald Trump is trying to argue that he didn\u2019t engage in insurrection, but that even if he did, he doesn\u2019t face consequence, and we\u2019re seeing that not only in the 14th amendment case but in a lot of cases he\u2019s facing \u2026 That\u2019s a dangerous person to be president,\u201d said Griswold<\/p>\n

Regardless of the outcome of Thursday\u2019s hearing, election officials hope the Supreme Court acts quickly; Colorado voters start to receive their primary ballots next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mesa County Elections Clerk and Recorder\u2019s office in Grand Junction, Colorado, seen here on Jan. 21, 2022. (Hart Van Denburg\/CPR News)Hart Van Denburg\/CPR News \u201cIt does raise our profile \u2013 not in a good way, for bad things to happen,\u201d said Chaffee County Clerk Lori Mitchell, a Democrat. \u201cI think the threat environment is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29337,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[120,1137,28,1126],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-29336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines","tag-politics-general"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29336","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=29336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29336"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=29336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}