Colorado Democrats clash over provisions in elections

Recounts, public funds for ads an issue

BY JESSE PAUL THE COLORADO SUN

Colorado Senate President Steve Fenberg rejected a provision requested by Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a fellow Democrat, limiting when candidates can pay for recounts in his measure this year tweaking the state’s election code.

And in another snub, Fenberg’s measure, introduced Tuesday, would prohibit the Colorado Secretary of State’s O ce from using state or federal funds for advertising that features candidates for federal, state or local o ce.

e move appears to come in response to controversial television commercials run by Griswold featuring herself and former Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams, a Republican running to be Colorado Springs mayor, in the lead-up to the 2022 election. Griswold was running for reelection at the time.

e measure, Senate Bill 276, represents a rare open disagreement among two powerful, rising Democratic stars in Colorado and it hinges on the sensitive issue of election conspiracies and misinformation.

Colorado law requires that mandatory recounts be conducted in races that are decided by an extremely small margin — when the number of votes separating the leading two candidates is less than 0.5% of the number of votes cast for the leading candidate. So, for instance: If Ronald McDonald had 1,000 votes and the Burger King had 999 votes, the one-vote di erence would be 0.1% of McDonald’s votes, triggering a recount.

For races where the margin between candidates is larger, a recount can be requested by a campaign and is conducted if they pay for the work.

Griswold wanted to prevent those so-called permissive recounts by candidates who lose by more than 2 percentage points to prevent