Several members of the El Paso County Republican Party asked, and the Colorado Supreme Court has declined to accept a recount appeal in a case where losing primary election petitions have asked for a recount. They noted simply that it did not belong in their jurisdiction, with no further elaboration.
This week the Colorado Supreme Court handed down a decision that it will not hear an appeal from a group of unsuccessful Republican candidates who ran in the Colorado Primary. Their focus isn’t the primary itself, but the vote recounts conducted on Aug. 3 and 4. The disappointed candidates claim that the discretionary primary election recounts conducted by the El Paso County Clerk and Recorder’s Office were not conducted correctly; meaning it appears, that they don’t like the results.
Dominion voting system with a sample ballot. Photo courtesy of AP.
The results showed no change from the counts done during the June 28 primary. In fact, all the petitioners in the suit lost their primaries by double digits.
Instead, they asked the court to void the results and hand the election records over to the Colorado Secretary of State’s office for another recount paid for by the state.
The petioners included two candidates for county commissioner Lindsey Moore and David Winney, another for county clerk and recorder candidate Peter Lupia, and county coroner candidate Dr. Rae Ann Weber, all of whom blamed the Dominion Voting systems used for the primary, as well as “improperly tested and unreliable electronic voting systems”.
The defendants in their petition include El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Chuck Broerman who is a Republican and Colorado Secretary of State Jenna Griswold, a Democrat.
Earlier this summer, the losing candidates behind the suit filed another petition in El Paso County to reduce the recount costs. Broerman refused, saying the cost was the cost for recounting more than 153,000 ballots.
On Wednesday Broerman told the Colorado Springs Gazette that “We have another election we need to focus on and we have a full plate. “That’s what we need to focus on right now. We need to move on.”
Not only is this a reasonable response, but it raises questions about the real reason for what some call a childish insistence that they couldn’t have lost: as if a double-digit loss to other Republican candidates should be suspect. Is the real reason for the continued demands to shed doubt on our elections?
This brouhaha in El Paso County is not an isolated incident in the state, or across the nation. The latest request that appears to be spreading is a demand by Trump-supporting contingencies for hand counts of votes.
Here in Chaffee County, election deniers continue to ask question after question, and make request after request regarding the 2020 election to the County Clerk and Recorders Office, as that office is ramping up for the Nov. 8 General Election. Many of them are the same requests, including demanding to examine the voting machines, and questioning the state’s rigorous risk management election verification process followed by all 64 Colorado county clerks’ offices.
Modern day republicans – “If I didn’t win, it was only because of cheating. It couldn’t possibly be the case that I am less popular than the other candidates!”
It sounds like a joke, but that is what they believe, as ridiculous as it is.