Colorado County Clerk sounds the alarm on GOP officials' efforts to slow election results

A new report is sounding the alarm about Republican election officials in Colorado who will likely protest the 2024 election results.

Colorado's election certification system is run by local canvassing boards that feature one Democratic appointee and one Republican, along with an elected elections official, USA Today reported. In the past few elections where the GOP appointee has protested certification, the Democrat and the elected official have outvoted the Republican.

In Jefferson County, which is the western and southwestern part of Denver, Republican representative Nancy Pallozzi has spent the last three elections refusing to certify results, but critics say that she hasn't ever raised any legitimate reasons to call the results of the election into doubt.

“We’ve worked with Nancy many times, and every election, she sends us a letter with some sort of reason for not certifying the election, and none of it is ever coherent,” wrote Jefferson County Clerk spokesperson Sarah McAfee. “It seems to be some sort of political statement.”

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Pallozzi's actions are part of a broader trend of Republican elections officials refusing to sign off on elections where Democrats win. While these objections so far haven't blocked elected officials from taking office, they could nonetheless create chaos and delay the certification of the electoral college this November.

“I think the powers driving the election denial movement have been using the last three years as a testing ground for different techniques, different strategies to see what they can do to create confusion and cause chaos in the process,” Matt Crane, the executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, told USA Today.

Professor Rick Hasen, from the University of California Los Angeles, who runs ElectionLawBlog.org, said that those local officials could stop the final result if they have enough allies and the election is close.

“It’s a kind of strategy, if it’s a close election, to find a way to slow things down or provide a path for changing election outcomes,” said Hasen.

See the full report and other concerning elections canvassing board officials here.