Experts warn vote tally certification refusals could undermine 2024 election

Two months ahead of the November presidential election, Colorado officials are warning that refusal by local election canvass board members to certify results fuels misinformation and threatens voter trust in the entire election process.

Republicans on three local canvass boards voted against certifying the June primary results, according to the secretary of state’s office. It is a tiny percentage of the 64 three-member boards in each Colorado county, but it occurred in the context of a growing national movement by conservative activists to use the once mundane, administrative task of verifying vote tallies to protest shortcomings they see in how elections are run.

“There is harm in allowing these protest votes and by consistently voting against certifying. These officials are sowing distrust. They’re sowing doubt about the integrity of Colorado elections, and they are signaling that this sort of conduct is OK,” Nikhel Sus, the deputy chief counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, told Colorado Newsline.

“By getting on the ground level, at the county level, not only are you potentially disrupting the certification process, but you’re also creating a foundation (for election deniers) to later dispute the results in Congress on January 6, 2025,” he said of the nationwide trend.

The tactic is part of a larger national movement to erode trust in elections through various methods.

CREW identified 35 election officials who voted against certifying results between 2020 and 2023, including three in Colorado: Nancy Pallozzi in Jefferson County, Candice Stutzriem in El Paso County and Theresa Watson in Boulder County. Pallozzi and Stutzriem also refused to certify the June primary, along with Watson’s successor, John Barrett, in Boulder County.

Local canvass boards are made up of the county clerk and appointees from the Democratic and Republican parties. Those parties must assign their canvass board members within 24 hours after Election Day. Their primary job is a numbers matching task, checking that there weren’t more ballots counted than cast in an election and that there weren’t more ballots cast than registered voters. A majority must vote to certify the results. For a long time, it was an uncontroversial duty that rarely made headlines or bubbled up to the general public’s interest.

Since 2020, however, more canvass board members across the country, often Republican, have refused to sign off on their county’s election certification.

The CREW report also identified officials who refused to certify election results in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

“Prior to 2020, this had not been an issue. This only became an issue in connection with former President (Donald) Trump’s election denial movement and stop-the-steal movement,” Sus said.

Trump falsely claimed that the 2020 election saw widespread voter fraud and was rigged in favor of President Joe Biden. His election denial resulted in a fake elector scheme in seven states, the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol in January 2021, and continued distrust on the right in the nation’s election process. Trump is the party’s presidential nominee this year and has refused to commit to accepting the election results.

“After Donald Trump refused to accept the results of the 2020 election, some extreme Republicans have refused to sign off on elections based solely on conspiracy theories and lies,” Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, said in a statement. “I led a new law in 2022 to ensure these tactics cannot slow election administration in Colorado. I will not give election deniers any opportunity to undermine confidence in our elections.”

Claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent or compromised have been debunked by elections officials, experts, media investigations, law enforcement, the courts and Trump’s own campaign and administration officials.

Members not ‘following responsibilities’ of canvass

In 2023, former Colorado state lawmaker and unsuccessful Republican congressional candidate Ron Hanks used the official state GOP email to instruct canvass board members to vote against certification of the November 2023 municipal elections.

“Nothing has changed since the 2020 elections,” he wrote, citing debunked criticisms of voting machines’ security, messy voter rolls and other concerns over election integrity.

Five Republicans subsequently voted against certifying results.

The immediate risk in Colorado that these election officials could delay or derail the post-election process is low. In the instances where the Republican official refused to certify, the Democratic official and county clerk affirmed the canvass and sent it up to the secretary of state. Colorado also has a legal remedy, created in 2022 through a bill on election security measures, in which the secretary of state can certify the election if the county board refuses to do so.

“The real risk is the message that it sends to the public,” Boulder County Clerk and Recorder Molly Fitzpatrick, a Democrat, said. “The real risk is when you have folks that are responsible for helping conduct the election or certify the election who clearly aren’t following their responsibilities. What does that say to the voter?”

Colorado’s election code spells out the limited duties for canvass boards as certifying the official abstract of votes, reconciling the number of ballots cast with ballots counted and the number of ballots cast with the number of registered voters, and observing any necessary recounts.

The Republican officials who refused to certify, however, cite concerns beyond that narrow scope. Pallozzi, for example, told Colorado Newsline her hesitancy in the last few elections stemmed from issues with the ballot chain of custody and how non-returned ballots were stored.

“I still encourage everyone to vote,” she said. “It’s our responsibility, those of us in the background, to watch the process and do what we can to help and make sure it gets done properly.”

But Fitzpatrick, who is president of the Colorado County Clerks Association, said county-level certification is not the right venue for process concerns.

“Take those grievances to the Colorado Legislature,” she said. “It is not what we’re here to do. We’re here to certify the election.”

Stutzriem wrote in an April column in the Denver Gazette that she did not vote to certify the March presidential primary because of statements made by Griswold after the 14th Amendment lawsuit by Colorado voters seeking to bar Trump from the ballot. The Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Trump was ineligible to be on the ballot because of the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause, but the U.S. Supreme Court reversed that decision. Griswold publicly applauded the state supreme court’s ruling.

“The secretary was tireless in her ambition to deny millions of voters in Colorado the opportunity to vote for the candidate of their choice in the presidential primary,” Stutzriem wrote. “It is impossible to identify, isolate and remove the full impact of Secretary of State Griswold’s influence upon the March 5 presidential primary.”

Stutzriem signed off on every individual component of the canvass that compared ballot numbers, but not the canvass as a whole. She noted on the actual certification that there were “insufficient grounds to certify this election.”

Stutzriem and Barrett did not reply to requests for comment.

El Paso County Clerk Steve Schleiker, a Republican, said the canvass process is not an avenue for a political statement.

“They’re taking things out on Jena Griswold, who has zero authority over this process,” he said. “They’re bringing in a political aspect that has nothing to do with verifying numbers. You can have any feelings you want against state or local elected officials, but what you’re certifying is that the numbers are correct.”

Fitzpatrick and Schleiker both said voters should feel confident in Colorado’s voting system and comfortable asking their local county clerks about how ballots are processed, counted and audited.

Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com. Follow Colorado Newsline on Facebook and X.