February 20, 2026 02:06 PM UTC

Serial Liar Eric Nelson Fails Spectacularly in Bid to Make HD-42 Ballot

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• by: Colorado Pols

We’ve been reminding readers of Colorado Pols to stay far away from Eric Nelson, a political hopeful with a resume full of ridiculous lies and exaggerations. Nelson has provided yet another reason to take our advice.

Earlier this month, Nelson submitted petition signatures in hopes of becoming an official candidate in the HD-42 (Aurora) Democratic Primary Election. On Thursday Nelson received word from the Colorado Secretary of State’s (SOS) office that he had failed to meet the threshold of valid signatures needed for ballot access.

In fact, Nelson wasn’t even CLOSE to meeting the requirement.

Candidates for the State House of Representatives can qualify for the June Primary ballot either through the caucus/assembly process or by submitting 1,000 valid petition signatures from registered voters of the same political party residing in the same house district. Nelson collected 1,635 signatures in total, but most of them were not from registered Democrats residing in House District 42. Here’s the summary provided by the SOS:

 

You read that correctly. Nelson was credited with just 29 accepted signatures, making him off by 971.

Our first thought when we heard the news of Nelson’s signature fail was that he might have fraudulently obtained many of the signatures (given his history, this is an obvious conclusion to reach). Instead, it seems that Nelson collected a bunch of signatures from people who simply don’t count toward the requirements set forth by the SOS — because they weren’t registered Democrats and/or didn’t reside in HD-42.

As Kyle Clark of 9News explains — and we can’t disagree — this is probably the biggest petition signature FAIL in Colorado political history.

Unless HD-42 Democrats somehow decide to let Nelson onto the ballot through the caucus process, we won’t have to worry about him until at least 2028.