Editor’s word: That is the primary of a sequence that appears into Colorado’s greatest common election contests.   

As soon as upon a time, the secretary of state was an elected workplace that acquired little consideration, and folks could be forgiven in the event that they could not determine who held it – or what the place did.

These days are lengthy gone.

At the moment, the workplace occupies the focus of a debate over the credibility of America’s election system. Usually, the officers who maintain the place – or those that search it – are compelled to take a facet, both declaring that election outcomes cannot be trusted or they’re fully error-free. 

That may have been the case in Colorado, had a county clerk, who disputed the outcomes of the final presidential election, received the Republican contest for the workplace. 

As a substitute, the race options Jena Griswold, the incumbent Democrat, and former Jeffco Clerk and Recorder Pam Anderson, who secured the GOP nomination. Each of them, the truth is, vigorously defend the integrity of Colorado’s election system.

Anderson’s place emanates from a long time of service as an election officer. A seasoned election veteran with 17 years in public service, she began out as metropolis clerk in Wheat Ridge and spent eight years as Jeffco’s clerk and recorder, the place she managed elections and different enterprise for the state’s second largest county. After time period limits ended her time as clerk and recorder, she grew to become legislative co-chair after which, till late 2020, government director of the Colorado County Clerks Affiliation. 

The previous decade introduced main adjustments to Colorado’s elections legal guidelines – vote by mail, risk-limiting audits, voting facilities, tightened processes round petition gathering – and Anderson, who holds a grasp’s diploma in public administration, has been a number one voice for a lot of of those adjustments.

Anderson mentioned she determined to run for secretary of state after seeing, at each the state and native degree, a parade of people that search elected places of work however who’re extra eager about partisan politics than in precise service.

She mentioned that, through the major marketing campaign occasions attended by all Republican candidates, folks weren’t getting the entire image about how elections work.

“They did not have anyone standing there telling them, ‘Hey, that is how this works. That is what we do,’” she mentioned.

Anderson mentioned she has quite a lot of religion in voters and their want for a professionally-run Secretary of State’s Workplace, a development she noticed all through the summer time, when voters advised her they need somebody who takes the partisan rhetoric down a notch.

“Coloradans are involved about equity and while you make it partisan or polarizing, it creates an actual drawback for notion on equity,” she mentioned, including she sees equity – and never partisanship – as the correct philosophy and imaginative and prescient for the workplace.

She mentioned work and mission of the company have to be considered via the lens {of professional} expertise, moderately than a political one.

And that, Anderson mentioned, is the distinction between herself and Griswold, accusing the latter of elevating her profile via and for political causes.

If elected, Anderson mentioned she plans to be a spokesperson for the credibility of Colorado’s elections, in addition to ably handle the Secretary of State’s Workplace – minus the partisan rancor that she believes now permeates the workplace. 

Management is a problem for the company, Anderson added, noting that, underneath Griswold, the company has gone via 4 deputy secretaries of state, a number of chiefs of employees, communications administrators and legislative liaisons.

“It’s concerning the mission and fewer concerning the politics. It is actually much less a few specific candidate’s politics and their future political profession,” she mentioned.

It stays to be seen if the race serves as a referendum on how Griswold has run the Secretary of State’s Workplace. However the incumbent factors to her document in arguing the voters ought to ship her again to the workplace.    

“I do not suppose any secretary of state in Colorado’s historical past has served throughout each a world pandemic and than unprecedented assault on the fitting to vote – whether or not it is via threats to election employees, insider threats, the place a really small however regarding portion of election officers tried to show the conspiracies and turn into safety threats, to simply all kinds of actually unprecedented habits.”

Griswold mentioned that, underneath time period, “democracy not solely survived, it thrived in the course of the pandemic.”

To assist her declare, she pointed to Colorado’s document because the second highest voter turnout within the nation and her “decisive” actions in Mesa County, by which she requested a choose to ban Tina Peters, the clerk and recorder, from overseeing elections.

Griswold, who’s ending her first time period as secretary of state, was the primary Democrat elected to that publish in 60 years. Her expertise consists of follow in anti-corruption and enterprise legislation. She additionally ran a small enterprise, and served as director of then-Gov. John Hickenlooper’s Washington, D.C. workplace. 

A primary-time candidate in 2018, Griswold, who holds a legislation diploma from the College of Pennsylvania, held no expertise working both state or native elections. She made missteps in her first yr in workplace.

Simply 5 months into her first time period, she arrange a extremely publicized exploratory committee to look at a run for the U.S. Senate, which furthered criticisms in some circles that she is “politically formidable and takes credit score for the work carried out by her predecessors and county clerks — with whom she has had a rocky relationship — as a springboard to greater workplace,” in accordance with a 2021 Colorado Politics profile.

A month earlier, Griswold’s workplace ran a press launch, calling for a boycott of Alabama over the state’s abortion ban, elevating issues about her biases over abortion, a problem that has appeared on Colorado ballots via citizen initiatives greater than a half-dozen instances. Griswold additionally drew criticism for asking Deliberate Parenthood to edit the press launch. 

She managed the company and ran elections throughout COVID-19, a unprecedented interval that examined America’s skill to carry one of many rituals of its grand experiment in consultant democracy. She tussled on social media with former President Donald Trump and have become a outstanding voice on the problem of election integrity, testifying earlier than Congress on voting rights and misinformation.

Griswold additionally handled alleged unlawful actions by Peters and Elbert County Clerk Dallas Schroeder, who made copies of his county’s election laborious drives, and likewise went after Democratic county clerks in Arapahoe and Pueblo counties additionally accused of unlawful actions. Like different election officers elsewhere within the nation, Griswold has confronted threats, primarily on-line. 

“I targeted on delivering my promise to guard the fitting to vote and increase entry to the poll,” she advised Colorado Politics, including her actions included increasing election drop packing containers, guaranteeing entry on tribal lands, and selling computerized voter registration, which she claimed led to registration of greater than 350,000 eligible Colorado voters from all political stripes.

Griswold additionally pointed to her efforts to reject “faux audits” and assist laws on the state Capitol, starting from proposals making it a felony to compromise voting gear and permit unauthorized entry, defending election employees from “doxxing” and prohibiting open carry of weapons inside 100 toes of a drop field or voting heart. On the similar time, she backed laws to decrease charges for registering a enterprise together with her workplace. 

Griswold disputed claims that her workplace has skilled a excessive turnover price, insisting there was little or no turnover among the many civil servants who run elections, the enterprise and licensing division, and the executive division. She didn’t reply when requested why there was such a excessive turnover among the many company’s management.

Embracing the tactic of guilt by affiliation, Griswold accused Anderson of campaigning with “election deniers,” although “I am the primary to say [that] Anderson will not be an election denier. I’ve by no means mentioned that.”