August 19, 2025 10:59 AM UTC

Republican County Clerks Lead Pushback Against Trump On Mail Ballots

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• by: Colorado Pols

President Donald Trump’s lengthy Truth Social screed yesterday vowing to lead “a movement” to abolish mail-in ballots, which have proven to be secure and popular in Colorado for over a decade, took place in the context of a wave of federal scrutiny and alleged attempted illegal meddling against Colorado county clerks and Secretary of State Jena Griswold–the latter of whom was hit with an expansive “fishing expedition” request for election data that goes beyond the state’s retention policies, while individual county governments were approached by unlawful requests to access voting equipment. Owing to a combination of factors ranging from the continued incarceration of convicted former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters to the Trump v. Anderson Supreme Court case that unsuccessfully sought to remove Trump from the state’s presidential ballot, our state is high on the radar of the Trump administration as it attempts to rewrite the history of the 2020 presidential election and vindicate Trump’s attempted coup after the fact.

As 9NEWS’ Rachel Krause reports, after yesterday’s broadside against mail-in ballots, Colorado’s Republican county clerks once again led the way pushing back:

“It’s incredibly frustrating and infuriating that this is happening right now, all based on lies,” [Executive Director of the Colorado County Clerks Association Matt] Crane said. “Elections are essentially a state and local function. And so this vast federal overreach, this power grab to change the way we do elections, all because he’s misguided and thinking that the election was stolen from him in 2020, it’s a very dangerous precedent, not just for this, but down the line.”

“It really comes down to this is challenging the Constitution. You know, the division of federal rights and the division of states’ rights is what it comes down to,” said Steve Schleiker, El Paso County Clerk and Recorder.

Schleiker, a Republican, said in Colorado and in El Paso County, mail-in voting is popular.

“Ninety-eight percent of the voters here in El Paso County do mail-in,” Schleiker said.

FOX 31:

“[Trump’s] assumptions and understanding of elections is very minimal,” Crane said. “Mail-in ballots are not rife with fraud; voting systems are incredibly accurate and incredibly secure, not just in Colorado, but across the country, and ironically, the solutions that he would like to see implemented are less accurate and less secure.”

…Crane noted that Coloradans do vote on paper ballots, but said that ballots are then counted by a voting system instead of by hand, which he said is “far more secure than hand counting ballots.” Crane said hand-counting can lead to a 5% error rate, which could be upward of thousands of votes in certain races.

Last week, before Trump was reportedly egged on by Russian President Vladimir Putin to return to the subject of mail-in ballots despite the fact that Russia itself uses them, local county clerks from both parties wrote an op-ed in the Colorado Sun, pleading for reason as their offices face a new wave of “false claims, more intimidation and even threats of violence.”

Three Republican clerks were contacted by someone claiming to represent the federal government and were asked to allow unauthorized access to their voting systems. All three said no. Why? Because Colorado law clearly prohibits third-party access to election equipment. They did the right thing. They followed the law and stood up for election integrity…

All across Colorado, election officials are facing hostility just for doing their jobs. But despite the threats and pressure, clerks and their teams in every county continue to show up, do the work and put their communities first. This isn’t about politics. It’s about people.

Let’s be clear. We are professionals. We take an oath to follow the law and serve the public. We’re accountable to voters, not to party operatives or political influencers. And we work together, across party lines, because that’s what democracy requires.

Like we said yesterday, Trump has no power to compel states to change their election systems, and outside Trump’s conspiracy bubble mail-in ballots are popular with Republicans and Democrats alike. The latter makes it unlikely that Congress will pass a law conforming to Trump’s wishes. The true purpose of Trump’s legally laughable demands appears to be first and foremost a continuation of Trump’s daily distraction campaign to put the Epstein files in the rearview mirror. In the long term, the doubt Trump is sowing today could be the Republican Party’s hole card in November of 2026, if as broadly expected they suffer punishing losses in congressional races. Trump established the precedent in 2020 of not accepting election results he doesn’t like, and he appears to be softening the ground for the same strategy in the 2026 midterms.

This is why it’s so important for Colorado’s Republican elected officials, and not just the clerks, to stand up right now for the election system they all owe their jobs to.

Fourteen short months from now, it could be all that matters for our country’s future.