Kaelan Deese
The Colorado secretary of state announced a temporary emergency adoption of new rules that limit who can access voting equipment in the state and protect the state from “sham” election audits.
Secretary Jena Griswold, a Democrat, said on Thursday that the rules are necessary to prevent the types of election equipment inspection and ballot recounts that have been seen in various counties across the nation, such as the full forensic audit of the Maricopa County election in Arizona and the audit of Michigan’s Antrim County election.
“A third-party vendor with no election experience is currently performing a faulty, unsecure election audit in Arizona, and calls for such sham audits have been spreading in other states,” read a press release from Griswold’s office. “Several Colorado counties have been contacted by third parties offering to conduct audits.”
PENNSYLVANIA POISED TO BEGIN ARIZONA-STYLE ELECTION AUDIT WITH SUBPOENA POWER
The new rules state that all people who hope to gain access to the state’s voting equipment must be appointed election judges or be employees of a county’s elections office, the secretary of state’s office, or the voting system vendor. They must also pass a background check.
Griswold pointed to Colorado’s next election on Nov. 2 as a point of “justification” for the emergency rules. It was not immediately clear when the rules are set to expire.
Prominent Colorado Republicans sharply criticized the secretary of state’s new rules, such as Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert, who said, “Democrats are consistently terrified of election integrity!”
In Arizona, Senate President Karen Fann, a Republican, hired an outside company called Cyber Ninjas to handle the full forensic audit and recount of 2.1 million ballots in the state. Critics of the audit have pointed out that the company’s CEO Doug Logan posted now-deleted content on social media promoting “conspiracy theories” about the 2020 election.
The advent of election audits has become an ever-growing rallying call by some conservative lawmakers seeking to test former President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, which saw President Joe Biden defeat him by more than 4 percentage points of the popular vote.
Several Republican lawmakers from states including Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Wisconsin have traveled to Arizona to tour the audit at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix.
The Keystone State is now poised to begin an Arizona-style election audit using subpoena power in the Republican-controlled Senate.
Georgia is also initiating an investigation into allegations surrounding the 2020 presidential election, with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger confirming to the Washington Examiner that his office will be looking into Fulton County’s monitoring of absentee ballots returned in drop boxes in the election following “new revelations” that officials said they were missing ballot transfer documents.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The Maricopa County audit’s results are expected to be released in a comprehensive report sometime later this summer, Senate audit liaison and former Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett said.
The Washington Examiner contacted Griswold’s office but did not immediately receive a response.
This content was originally published here.