Sara Wilson, Colorado Newsline

Courthouse staff in Mesa County have received multiple threats following last week’s sentencing of former Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters to nearly nine years in prison for her role in an elections systems security breach.

The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the threats, and extra security measures are being implemented, according to spokesperson Wendy Likes.

She did not describe the number or nature of the threats and did not disclose the additional security measures in order to “ensure their effectiveness.” ...

The district attorney for Colorado’s 7th Judicial District is resigning from his seat and not seeking reelection for a second term, he announced earlier this week.

Seth Ryan, a Republican, announced on Monday that he plans to resign at the end of October. He then withdrew his candidacy for the November election with the secretary of state. The Republican was running unopposed.

An El Paso County judge determined that opponents of Colorado GOP Chair Dave Williams did not have enough votes to remove him during an August meeting.

That means Williams is likely to remain chair for the foreseeable future, even as a faction of the party view Eli Bremer as their leader and a chorus of elected Republicans call on Williams to resign.

El Paso County District Judge Eric Bentley wrote in an order on Wednesday night that actions to remove Williams as chair and install Bremer at an Aug. 24 meeting in Brighton were not valid. He specifically decided on a grammatically-confusing party bylaw that outlines the number of votes needed to remove an officer. ...

Two months ahead of the November presidential election, Colorado officials are warning that refusal by local election canvass board members to certify results fuels misinformation and threatens voter trust in the entire election process.

Republicans on three local canvass boards voted against certifying the June primary results, according to the secretary of state’s office. It is a tiny percentage of the 64 three-member boards in each Colorado county, but it occurred in the context of a growing national movement by conservative activists to use the once mundane, administrative task of verifying vote tallies to protest shortcomings they see in how elections are run.

“There is harm in allowing these protest votes and by consistently voting against certifying. These officials are sowing distrust. They’re sowing doubt about the integrity of Colorado elections, and they are signaling that this sort of conduct is OK,” Nikhel Sus, the deputy chief counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, told Colorado Newsline. ...

A coalition of Colorado religious leaders on Tuesday endorsed a ballot measure that would remove language in the state Constitution banning same-sex marriage.

Amendment J, referred by the Legislature to the November ballot, seeks to remove a constitutional amendment passed by voters in 2006 that defines a marriage as only between a man and woman.

Same-sex marriage is legal in Colorado and at the federal level because of the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. State leaders worry, however, that the court could reverse the decision just as it overturned the right to abortion enshrined in Roe v. Wade. ...