The 2020 election was hardly a shining example of how to run free and fair elections.  The sheer number of court cases disputing everything from electoral procedures, illegal law changes, relaxing regulations, to outright fraud should be a signal to every American regardless of election results.  Given the scale, variety, and patterns of election irregularities, it’s impossible that the 2020 election was the first time these activities had been executed.  The question becomes where and when were these tactics developed, tested, and perfected?  

The election fraud executed in swing states is no coincidence.  All of these states have the same conditions that enabled election fraud at scale:  mass mail-in ballots, Dominion electronic voting manipulation, and weak auditing procedures.  Strange, isn’t it?  Six states, all equipped with the relatively same processes and equipment, resulting in the same large-scale fraud. This formula came from somewhere, but the state where all these techniques originated, tested, and perfected hasn’t received any press addressing the 2020 election fraud.  This state has branded itself “The Gold Standard” for election administration, but in reality Colorado is the gold standard for election fraud.

To some, this may come as a surprise, however to Colorado voters that know this state’s election history this article will lay out a clear case as to why Colorado is the birthplace of the election fraud we now know took place during the 2020 election.  In this piece we’ll talk about why Colorado is The Election Fraud Test kitchen.  

The genesis of my thesis that Colorado is the election fraud test kitchen started during my training as a 2020 election judge.  I had never been even remotely involved in local politics, elections, or any type of political campaigning until this year.  The only thing I vaguely remember is being a college freshman marching with a bunch of extremely angry, womynx protesting who knows what. It was such a critical issue, I can’t remember what it was.  It was so cringe, I steered clear of politics, until this election.  I decided carrying out my civic duty as an election judge would be an exciting and interesting way to participate in Colorado’s election process.  I approached my new job with an open mind and a genuine excitement.

On the first day of training when I heard the trainers state, “Colorado is the gold standard” in reference to election administration at least a half a dozen times before lunch, my branding brain was alerted.  Not only was the statement too canned, it was always repeated verbatim.  What really caught my attention was when the statement was used.  It was always used in response to questions that were common sense challenges to election processes or rules that didn’t quite make sense.  For example, we were to verify at least three pieces of a voter’s personal identity e.g. voters name, birthdate, address etc. to find them in the voter database.  However, Colorado’s voter ID rules are so lax it made it almost impossible to confirm a voter’s identity with certainty.

When several of us asked for clarification or pointed out obvious contradictions, we were told, “Colorado is the gold standard for elections!”  By the end of the first training day,  it was clear this was a tagline meant to sell us on trusting the system.  Because of course, why would anyone dare to question The Gold Standard?  I was completely convinced this was a branding campaign for the state after I heard it repeated over and over by County Clerks, The Secretary of State, elected officials in the State House of Representatives, Former Secretaries of State, election consultants, and other senior election officials.  Why were they relentlessly pushing this self-generated accolade?  

It turns out branding is one of the key fundamentals when establishing an enticing and convincing model for others to follow.  Organizations and professionals are constantly searching out best practices and to learn from “the best”. Why would election administration be any different?  Bureaucratic environments are the last place anyone wants to take a risk, so it’s the perfect place to sell a fake “gold star” to the gullible, or willing buyers.  Over many years, Colorado had successfully set itself up to be the perceived leader of election administration with a slogan. Genius. 

Why was Colorado identified as the state to develop a range of election fraud techniques that could scale and be soft-pedaled to other states?  The answer is because it had an unusually perfect set of natural conditions.  These conditions made the state ideal for experimentation, testing, learning, and eventually perfecting election fraud. Let’s break down the ingredients that make Colorado The election fraud test kitchen.

Population:  Enough People and Perfectly Distributed

Colorado lands almost dead center in terms of state population in the U.S.  When thinking about the ideal place to test election fraud, population is a factor.  Too many people and manipulation gets unwieldy.  Too few and fraud is easier to detect.   

The second aspect of Colorado’s population is its distribution.  Colorado has only five counties with a population between a half million and a million people. Because the voting population is in a small handful of counties it sets up three juicy election fraud conditions.  First, controlling a small number of counties election outcomes is easy to game-out, and successfully execute manipulation.  Second, this small number of CO counties basically represents the state, so if the key counties are controlled, the whole state is.  And finally, the number of people needed to go along with shoddy election administration is relatively easy to manage. 

Culture: Laid Back,  Relatively Unengaged, and Independent

Colorado, the state of Rocky Mountain “high”, world-class athletes, great weather, and an “out west vibe” make the people living in the state generally independent, outdoorsy, and laid-back.  The population here is interested in other pursuits over politics. especially compared to other states. Political whistleblowers are few and far between.  They’re easily identified, ignored, and ultimately silenced.  This ensures the continuation of programs designed to defraud the public can move past the initial development stages into optimization and standardization phases.  

Technology: It’s Here, We Like It, We Use It

There’s no shortage of tech in Colorado.  Boulder and Denver are hotspots with telecom, aerospace, Silicon Valley corporate outposts, and a decent tech startup ecosystem.  The military is scattered around the state with a strong concentration to the south with the Airforce academy and Army presence.  Rural areas are also tech-forward.  Agriculture has been high tech for years.  Farmers and ranchers are hardly luddites.  The widespread familiarity with technology creates a population that is familiar with technology, has an appetite for it, and understands the efficiency advantages that come along with tech adoption.  When it comes to injecting technology into the election process like voting machines, databases, and third party applications it’s an easy sell.  It goes like this, “the gold standard for elections” is modern, efficient, and convenient by using technology.  Never mind the nasty little issues of honesty, accountability, and transparency being sacrificed in exchange for perceived “efficiency”.

Political Value: Under the National Radar

With only nine electoral votes at stake, Colorado’s electoral value is mice nuts, especially in comparison to California or Florida.  Being small and politically irrelevant keeps national attention off the inner workings of the state’s electoral process, who and how political influencers operate.  

Money:  High ROI on Spending in Colorado 

As in any state, there are some pockets of very wealthy individuals.  However, most of the money rests with folks who have vacation homes in the state.  Colorado is not their central focus if they’re politically active.  Now, with the folks with deep pockets who do consider this their primary residence, their political funding goes a long way.  Colorado is cheap to buy in comparison to many other states.  This extends to political money dispersed through privately held organizations.  Using money to influence law changes through legislation, ballot measures, and local action hardly makes a dent in today’s political budgets.  When thinking about placing state candidates in all levels of Colorado state government, small to medium campaign donations have a strong ROI.  This creates the environment where laws can be changed easily and funding multiple vectors for fraud hardly breaks the bank. 

What Did The Election Test Kitchen Produce?

We all know that the same ingredients in a recipe can deliver completely different results.  A few eggs mixed and cooked differently can yield an elegant souffle or a pile of scrambled eggs.  So, what did the election fraud test kitchen produce by mixing and cooking things differently? 

Mail-in Voting

Mail-in voting or vote-by-mail (VBM) is the lynchpin to election manipulation.  Colorado was the third state to adopt mail-in voting in 2013. Since adopting VBM, Colorado has remained a blue state.  The general principle that ushered in vote by mail (vbm) was accessibility justified by the trope of increasing voter turn-out.  What we know now is that the idea of “accessibility” is a trojan horse for oodles of measures and laws that have been perverted to reach nefarious ends.  Colorado implemented VBM in a mid-cycle election year, after having “marketed” the idea to Coloradans.  For many years prior, VBM was sold as a modern, convenient, and less expensive way to vote.  It was especially appealing to voters in rural areas.  Interestingly, elected officials from both sides promoted VBM even though it was well-known before 2013 that VBM was the least secure method of casting ballots.  Today former and current Secretaries of State stand by Colorado’s VBM system.  Scott Gessler (R) initiated the movement, Wayne Williams (R) finished the job, and now Jenna Griswold (D) has cemented the deal.  Together this group has tested, perfected and standardized VBM, to a point where Colorado, “the gold standard for elections”, is now the model for other states to adopt VBM.  Particularly handy for 2020 where Covid was the excuse for other states to follow Colorado’s lead. 

What’s even more interesting is where staffers from the Gessler and Williams administrations landed once out of office.  One example of many is former Colorado Assistant Secretary of State Jerome Levato.  He is now at the EAC (U.S. Election Assistance Commission) the Federal Governmental organization dedicated to dispersing (HAVA) federal funding.  HAVA and the EAC are dedicated to facilitating states efforts to “modernize” elections plus provide “election administration guidance”.  With officials from the election fraud test kitchen moving into federal roles, election fraud standardization and scaling becomes frighteningly efficient. 

Dominion Domination

Once Colorado scaled VBM, the very real downsides of actually processing mail-in ballots became overwhelmingly obvious.  It turns out, checking and verifying signatures on mail-in ballots is hard.  When states had absentee ballots, the volume was low enough to be able to cope with this issue.  Once VBM hit scale, so did the signature verification issue.  The only real solution was to bring in technology to solve the problem.  That’s where Dominion enters the picture.  

Optical scanners were the first Dominion machines to be installed for signature verification.  At first Gessler was able to secure Dominion in about two thirds of CO counties using HAVA funding as the carrot.  Williams followed, and used the stick; including lawsuits to secure the remaining Colorado counties.  It was an easy transition to bring in other Dominion machines for counting etc. in order to increase efficiency and “modernize” the election process.  Colorado had years to perfect these systems, processes, and procedures starting in 2013.  Given the Gold Standard reputation, as Colorado learned and evangelized it’s “success”, other states willingly followed suit.  

Curiously, Dominion, a Canadian company, chose Denver, Colorado for the home of it’s U.S. headquarters. When fact-checking for this article, enquiries went unanswered to find out when Dominion opened in Denver.  So questions remain, why choose Denver for Dominion HQ?  Was it chosen to more easily serve and sell more Dominion to CO?  Was CO their first major U.S. client?  Was Colorado designed to be a model for other states to implement a tip-to-tail Dominion program?  Without knowing for sure, on the surface it appears Colorado could have very well been selected as the place to develop a model for statewide roll-outs.

Can I use my coffee Shop Punch Card as a Voter ID?

The pattern should be coming into focus.  Because of VBM, the next thing Colorado championed was lax voter ID laws.  Colorado was an early adopter of automatic voter registration beginning in 2017.  Only California and Oregon started earlier, in 2016.  Automatic voter registration was another trojan horse.  Everyone who gets a CO driver’s license is registered to vote in CO.  It’s an opt-out program where the burden of being honest about citizenship or residence is shifted to the individual, not the state.  Through the backdoor, the DMV was identified as the inherent arbiter of identity for voting.  It’s a crack in the system that thousands of illegal voters can fall through.  This program had many years to be tested in order for Colorado to lead the charge in promoting this “validated” program. 

As an election judge I experienced the reality of the pitfalls of automatic voter registration first-hand.  We were given a list of fifteen acceptable forms of voter IDs.  Unfortunately, only a U.S. Passport covers all the requirements of proving a voter’s identity, residency, birth date, and citizenship.  All other IDs only cover one of the four requirements.  In voting centers we were not allowed to ask for other forms of ID in order to confirm with certainty a voter was indeed eligible to vote.  We were assured that if there were illegally cast ballots, that “on the back end we’ll catch them”.  Election Judges from all sides were not confident this would happen in time, and with consistency.  There is no telling how many people cast fraudulent ballots.

Audit Theater: The Risk Limiting Audit

Given Colorado had gone electronic early-on, auditing, ballot integrity, signature verification, and election results was the next aspect of the election process that was targeted for “efficiency”.  In 2017 Boulder, Colorado was the first place in the U.S. to implement this “scientific” procedure to validate elections.  The RLA is based on statistical analysis, rather than auditing actual ballots or results.  Here is an explanation of how the RLA works.  What’s important for this article is the date and where the RLA started.  By establishing this procedure for certifying election results in 2017, that gave Colorado plenty of time to standardize the procedure and evangelize it to other states, allowing this faulty system to scale. 

  
Now that we’ve explored the necessary conditions for Colorado to win the title of the Election Fraud Test Kitchen, and what it produces, let’s remember the goal.  The aim of a test kitchen isn’t to create a one-off creation that everyone admires.  That’s the Iron Chef model.  A test kitchen is designed to create, test, perfect, and ultimately standardize a recipe so that others can replicate it with certainty in their home-kitchen.  That’s exactly what Colorado did over the course of years to produce election manipulation that can be replicated.  When something can be replicated with certainty for example: a marketing program, a recipe, or developing a new product that process can be scaled. Scaling is the last component of being able to carry out massive election fraud that can overturn results on a county, state, and ultimately national level.