Colorado’s November vote results are official as state’s elections chief certifies the vote count
Jena Griswold signs the certification for Colorado’s ballot tally amid “false election narratives swirling throughout the nation”
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold officially certified the state’s November election results Tuesday, a normally sleepy affair that took on unusual significance in the face of President Donald Trump’s persistent rejection of 2020’s vote count showing Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential race.
“I am so proud to report that despite having to administer statewide elections both in pandemic conditions and with extensive false election narratives swirling throughout the nation, officials from my office and the county clerks offices across the state rose to the challenge,” Griswold said during a virtual certification signing ceremony.
Colorado’s nine electoral votes will go to Biden, who easily bested Trump in the state on Nov. 3.
Colorado saw record turnout in last month’s election, with nearly 87% of active voters — representing nearly 3.3 million ballots — casting votes. Griswold said 94% of ballots in Colorado were cast using a mail ballot, a system Trump has without evidence denounced as susceptible to fraud.
Even as the Electoral College gets ready to officially put Biden into the White House with a scheduled vote on Monday, Trump and his allies continue to mount legal challenges to last month’s results despite court after court rejecting assertions of fraud and malfeasance on the part of election officials.
The latest challenge came hours before Griswold certified Colorado’s vote count. Texas’ Republican attorney general filed a lawsuit with the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday seeking to invalidate presidential election results in four swing states that were instrumental in putting Biden over the 270-vote Electoral College threshold needed to win the White House.
In the meantime, a group of Colorado House Republicans on Monday sent a letter to outgoing House Speaker KC Becker calling for an audit of the Dominion Voting Systems software used by the state and the formation of an election integrity commission, despite a lack of evidence for any claims of large-scale voter fraud.
Becker dismissed the request, accusing the Republicans who wrote the letter of trafficking in “debunked conspiracy theories.”
Colorado-based Dominion has been under fire from many Republicans over the last few weeks, including the president, who claimed last month that the company’s machines deleted 2.7 million votes cast for him across the country and changed 221,000 votes cast in Pennsylvania for him to favor Biden.
Dominion refuted the president’s allegations.
Political attacks on the integrity of election machines and software is nothing new. In 2018, Democrats raised similar questions, most notably in the Georgia gubernatorial race and in Beto O’Rourke’s senatorial battle against Republican Ted Cruz.
Those concerns culminated in a March 2019 letter being sent by four top Democratic senators — including U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar — to the heads of the country’s three largest election system vendors, including Dominion, asking for more accountability from the companies and concluding “our democracy is paying the price.”
Asked by a reporter at the end of the signing ceremony whether the secretary of state planned to run for re-election in 2022, Griswold said yes.
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