Colorado’s election chief was shot down by her own party leaders after demanding the Democrat-controlled legislature adopt a measure to chill future recount efforts.
Adding insult to injury, the Democrats added what we like to call the “shut up and sit down” provision telling Secretary of State Jena Griswold to stop using taxpayer dollars to promote her own vain self for reelection.
We’re giving Colorado Senate President Steve Fenberg a rare standing ovation on this one.
PeakNation will recall that Griswold blew more than $1 million in taxpayer dollars to fund a blatantly political reelection TV commercial last year featuring Griswold and former Republican SoS Wayne Williams talking about the evils of election disinformation.
The Colorado Sun reports:
The measure, Senate Bill 276, represents a rare open disagreement among two powerful, rising Democratic stars in Colorado and it hinges on the sensitive issue of election conspiracies and misinformation.
And yet, it sure looks like the misinformation and conspiracies are coming from Griswold’s office.
Fenberg rejected a legislative measure suggested by Griswold to prohibit future candidates like her nemesis Tina Peters from paying for a recount that falls outside of the automatic recount trigger.
Griswold complained it made her election employees work too hard to have to repeat the process of counting an election every two years, even though the agency was paid $100,000 by Peters’ campaign for the work.
Annie Orloff, a Griswold spokeswoman, offered this sinister explanation in a written statement to The Sun:
“These unnecessary recounts are being used by election deniers all over the country as a means to sow doubt and burden election workers to the point they are no longer willing to do these jobs.”
And yet, after a good faith Google effort, we could find no evidence of such a claim from the previous election, other than states conducting automatic recounts as required by their own laws.
Fenberg isn’t buying it, either.
“I think we want to increase confidence in our elections and not remove options for people.”