The Election of the New State GOP Chair and A Voter Integrity Update

This past weekend on March 11, 2023, the Colorado Republican Party State Central Committee (SCC) met in Loveland Colorado to elect a new party officers. The event was attended by elected Republican county officers and bonus members from the sixty-four counties plus elected Republican state officials. Three hundred fifty-three members were in attendance, as well as a number of guests and visitors. From Delta County, I attended, along with our Secretary Brittany Deleff and our Treasurer Cathy Cheatham, serving as a proxy for our Vice-Chair Leslie Parker. There were seven candidates vying for the chairmanship, two candidates running for vice-chair and four candidates competing for the secretary position. The candidates were:

Chair	Vice-Chair	Secretary
1.Tina Peters	Tod Watkins	Cynthia Sarmiento
2. Aaron Wood	Priscilla Rahn	Robert Armagost
3. Kevin Lundberg		Anna Ferguson
4. Erik Aadland		Lori Cutinelli
5. Casper Stockham
6. Dave Williams
7. Kevin McCarney

All candidates made short presentations after being nominated. Voting was made on secret paper ballots. The meeting was long as after voting for each race, ballots had to be deposited in secure ballot boxes, transported to the teller room and hand counted by the teller committee. This process took 30 to 45 minutes to complete for each race and each round of voting. Voting for the chair took three rounds as a candidate needed 51% of the votes to win. There were 388 votes cast in the race for state party chair (these included proxies); so it would take 198 votes to win. The results of the first ballot gave Tina Peters 39.5 votes, Aaron Wood 11 votes, Kevin Lundberg 36.5 votes, Eric Aadland 107 votes, Casper Stockham 24.5 votes, Dave Williams 117.5 votes and Kevin McCarney 39.5 votes. The partial votes are because some counties have two vice-chairs which each have a ½ vote. The voting could have gone on for seven ballots but was completed in three, after Casper Stockham was dropped at the end of the second round as lowest vote-getter and Aaron Wood and Kevin McCarney voluntarily dropped out. Tina Peters and Kevin Lundberg also announced from the floor that they were dropping out and encouraged their supporters to vote for Williams. This was in violation of the meeting rules but seemed fully in character for Tina Peters. The third and final round of voting gave Eric Aadland 170 votes or 45.2% and Dave Williams 206 votes or 54.8%.

The election for Vice-Chair took one round as the incumbent Priscilla Rahn received 241 votes or 64.4% and Todd Watkins, the El Paso County Vice-Chair received 135.5 votes or 35.6%.

The race for Secretary took two rounds to complete. The first round of balloting gave Cynthia Sarmiento 71.5 votes or 19.35%, Robert Armagost 51.5 votes or 13.94%, Anna Ferguson 168 votes or 45.47% and Lori Cutinelli 76.5 votes or 20.7%. In the second round, Robert Armagost voluntarily dropped out and the results were Cynthia Sarmiento 93.5 votes or 25.2%, Anna Ferguson 193 votes or 52% and Lori Cutinelli 83 votes or 22.3% (Only 380 ballots were cast in this race, so 187 votes were needed to win).

So that gives us a new executive committee for the Colorado State GOP:

Chairman Dave Williams.

Vice-Chair Priscilla Rahn.

Secretary Anna Ferguson.

Dave Williams is a former member of the Colorado House of Representatives, representing House District 15, in El Paso County. He assumed office on January 11, 2017. He left office on January 9, 2023. Williams' professional experience includes working as the vice president of logistics for his family-owned company and as the vice chairman of the El Paso County Republican Party. He unsuccessfully ran in the primary to unseat incumbent Congressman Doug Lamborn in 2022. He is an ardent Trump supporter. He was very strident in his nomination speech. He made the following comments during his nomination speech, “Our party doesn’t have a brand problem. Our party has a problem with feckless leaders who are ashamed of you and ashamed of our conservative values. Our party can win again, but only if we first reject their failed leadership and go on offense. I'm sick and tired of our party always being on defense. We are the party that elected Donald J. Trump and we are not going to apologize. It’s time to go on the attack. So why don’t we go on offense, offense, offense!” He was much more conciliatory after he was elected. He expressed a desire to work with the different factions in the party to get Republicans elected. He was joined on stage by the second-place finisher, Erik Aadland, who also encouraged all Republicans to unite and work together to be successful in electing Republican candidates.

Priscilla Rahn is a music teacher for the Denver Public Schools. During her report as Vice-Chairwoman, before the elections started, she opened her presentation with an acapella version of God Bless America. It was inspiring and nearly all the members in attendance joined in. Rahn has worked extensively to recruit Republican voters in minority communities, citing as an example a major success in a community of Ethiopian immigrants.

Anna Ferguson is a former vice-chair of Adams County Republican Party and current Vice-Chair of the Adams County Republican Women. Her message in campaigning for the position was she would ensure that all records, meeting minutes, actions taken and membership lists are complete, transparent and available to all members of the Republican Party.

Absent from the meeting were 19 Republican members of the state House, who were prevented from attending due to an extraordinary Saturday session called by Democratic leaders after GOP lawmakers filibustered a gun control bill past midnight on Thursday. Most of them were able to vote by proxy. This was an intentional move on the part of the Democrats to punish the Republican representatives for daring to oppose their radical and unconstitutional gun laws. These types of measures are being increasingly used by the Democrats to batter and harass the minority Republicans. This is a result of focusing on an election that occurred 3 years ago and unproven claims of voter fraud. We lost seats in 2022. This made a bad situation much worse.

I hope our new party Chairman will focus on trying to bring the party together and winning elections. Numerous media outlets are already calling him an election denier. We need to quit debating who really won the 2020 election and focus on winning the next election. This may sound like heresy to some of you but let me give you the information I presented at our March 7, 2023 DCRCC meeting on Voter Integrity. Some of this is a re-iteration of information presented in May 2021 at our monthly meeting and in a blog published that month. However, it includes updated information. I explain why we need to not focus on election fraud as the single-most important issue in our elections. If you believe that voter fraud due to the computer tabulation machines is the single-most important issue, please read the remainder of this blog. I hope I am able to get you to understand why I am saying that other issues are more important and we need to focus on those issues if we are going to win elections.

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Voter Integrity Update

The issue of voter integrity or lack thereof as the reason for Republicans not succeeding in state-wide elections continues to be proclaimed, discussed and ranted about. We get those types of comments here at our monthly meetings. In fact, I received an email request from a Republican voter here in Delta County asking if we could have a discussion about removing the Dominion machines from Delta County. It is also a central issue in the upcoming election of the Colorado GOP State Party Chair. I have taken this issue very seriously. I started a review of the 2020 Delta County election shortly after I was first elected in February of 2021. We also established a Voter Integrity/Elections Committee, chaired by Curt Grinnell, in 2021. I have personally reviewed all the video clips, watched presentations by Mike Lindell and Doug Frank, both on video and in person in Grand Junction and watched the movie 2,000 Mules by Dinesh D’Souza. I believe voter integrity is a serious matter and needs to be taken seriously. However, there has been no evidence of actual wide-spread voter fraud here in Delta County. However, because this issue continues to matter to so many people and will likely be a significant factor in the March 11, 2023 meeting of the Colorado GOP State Central Committee meeting, let me review what we found in our review and research.

1. Our review of the 2020 election results did not show any indication of organized voter fraud. I say organized, because voter fraud does happen on an individual basis, but there is absolutely no indication that it has happened on a large-scale organized basis.

So, let’s look at the data:

Delta County Population:	2010 Census	2019 Estimate	2020 Census
Total Population:	30,952	31,162	31,661
Persons under 18	6,067	6,107	6,174
Total Eligible to Vote	24,885	25,055	25,487
Total Active Registered/Percent Active Registered	21,024/84%		24,315/95%. 22,576/93%
Voters who voted in 2020 election/Voter Turnout			19,553/88%

The results for the Presidential race were:

Candidate	Votes Recieved	Percentage of Votes
President Donald Trump	13,081	67.53%
Joe Biden	5,887	30.39%
Others	402	2.08%
Total Ballots Cast for President	19,370	100%
Total Ballots cast in Election	19,533	99% voted for President

Other results in the election were similar. Of the six contested races on the ballot for Delta County, all Republican candidates received from 67.57% (Lauren Boebert) to 78.75% (Matt Soper). The other candidates and percentages were Kim McGahey 66.87%, Cory Gardner 67.96%, Joyce Rankin 70.61%, Wendell Koontz 71.95%. So, the results in the Presidential race do not look out of line with results for other Republican candidates.

2. Voter registrations also tally with the voting results. Republicans number 40-some percent of registered voters in Delta County – around 10,000-some voters. Democrats number in the teens – around 3,000-some voters, Unaffiliated voters also number forty-some percent. But party affiliations are dropping for both parties. Republican registrations dropped from 10,546 in 2020 to 10,131 today, Democrats dropped even more, from 3,813 to 3,247. And Unaffiliated registrations have increased from 9,039 to 10,474. They are now the largest category in the county. I believe this is a concern. I’ll get to that in the closing.

Political Party Registrations	11/2020	%	4/14/2021	%	3/6/2023	%	% Change
Democrat	3,813	16%	3,653	16%	3,247	13%	-3%
Republican	10,546	44%	10,166	43%	10,131	42%	-2%
Unaffiliated	9,039	38%	9,123	39%	10,474	43%	+5%
Other	467	2%	458	2%	463	2%	0
Total	23,865	100%	23,400	100%	24,315	100%	+2%

3. Checking on specific allegations about Delta County.

The presentation by Doug Frank, called The Big Lie, that I attended in Grand Junction gave specific details about the supposed hacking that was done in the 2020 election that changed votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. Thus, allowing Biden to defeat Trump by 439,745 votes. Here is the information that was presented about Delta County:

On November 4, 2020 at 2:26:42 in the morning a computer with the IP address of 31.20.239.13 located at 51°.816 and 5°.8122 which is in Gelderland, Netherlands targeted a computer with the IP* address of 208.90.190.114 located at 38°.740.6945 and 108°.072 6945 which is in Delta, Colorado changed the 5,090 votes for Joe Biden and 13,878 votes for Donald Trump to 5,887 votes for Biden and 13,081 votes for Donald Trump. A difference of 1,594 votes. Seems very compelling, right? So, I checked this information. Here is what I found. Delta County finished counting votes by 10 pm or 2200 hours on November 3, 2022. They posted the results on the Colorado Secretary of States website at that time. While I cannot provide what the exact results were at 10:00 pm on November 3, 2020, I can say that the Elections Clerk in the Delta County office says the numbers she had from the Delta County tabulation computer were the numbers that were posted on the State website at 10:00 pm on November 3, 2020. These preliminary numbers are lower than the final posted numbers because some ballots were rejected for signature issues and voters given 8 days to cure their ballot and the other ballots such as military ballots had 8 more days to come in. I can state that Rene Loy says the final tabulation of 5,887 votes for Biden and the 13,081 votes for Trump were the final numbers that were tabulated on the Delta County computer and posted on the Secretary of State’s website. And NOTE, they were finished counting by 10:00 pm on November 3, 2020, nearly 4½ hours before the supposed hack took place. I also found that other information on the Frank Big Lie site was also incorrect. The Delta County tabulation computer has never been connected to an internet server and so does not have a IPv4 address, as is listed in The Big Lie. In fact, the IP address listed in The Big Lie is connected to a computer at United States Manhattan Icon Enterprises in Manhattan, Kansas. You can check that out for yourself. The other information listed for Delta County seems correct. However, when the date and time of the hack cannot possibly be correct and the IP address of the supposed hacked computer is incorrect, how can you trust any of this information? Or at a minimum, it shows that the information on Delta County was wrong and you absolutely have to verify every claim made about voter fraud committed in the 2020 election.

* The “IP” part of IP address stands for “Internet Protocol.” The “address” part refers to a unique number that gets linked to all online activity you do…somewhat like a return address on a letter you’d send out. When you’re at home, an IP address is assigned to your computer by your service provider (think Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, or AT&T). Since they are the ones giving you access to the Internet, it’s their role to assign an IP address to your computer. Your Internet activity goes through them, and they route it back to you, using your IP address.

4. Actions taken here in Delta County to address voter fraud:

We initiated the review process on Voter Integrity, and published those results in a blog in May 2021. We also began a Voter Registration review by precinct, increased our election judges and poll watchers and we worked hard at ballot curing in the 2022 General Election, that helped get Congresswoman Boebert re-elected. I truly believe that organized voter fraud is not taking place in Delta County.

5. So, can we get rid of the computer voter tabulation machines? In a word, the answer is NO. And here is why. The use of the computer tabulation machines is mandated in state law. The law was first passed in 2004 and amended in 2013. That law is CRS 1-5-612 (b). It reads:

C.R.S. 1-5-612. Use of electronic and electromechanical voting systems.

(a) Except as otherwise provided in subsection (1)(b) of this section, the governing body of any political subdivision may, upon consultation with the designated election official, adopt an electronic or electromechanical voting system, including any upgrade in hardware, firmware, or software, for use at the polling locations in the political subdivision. The system may be used for recording, counting, and tabulating votes at all elections held by the political subdivision.

(b) For all elections conducted under the “Uniform Election Code of 1992”, the governing body of any political subdivision shall, upon consultation with the designated election official, adopt an electronic or electromechanical voting system to be used for tabulating votes at all elections held by the political subdivision. The provisions of this subsection (1)(b) do not apply to counties with fewer than one thousand active electors as of the date of the last general election.

(2) An electronic or electromechanical voting system may be used only if the system has been certified by the secretary of state in accordance with this part 6.

So, the county cannot get rid of the computer tabulation machines. It is illegal, under current state law – section (b) above. The only way to get rid of the requirement to use computers to tabulate the ballots, is to change this legislation. And that is not going to happen with the Democrats in near total control of the state legislature. In addition, there has been no evidence that organized voter fraud has taken place, here in Delta County. So let me summarize, where I believe we are on this issue, in Delta County:

1. Analysis of the Delta County 2020 General Election does not show unexpected results indicating voter fraud occurred.

2. Analysis of specific information provided on the supposed voter fraud in Delta County has proven to be incorrect.

3. Voter fraud claims do seem to be contributing to voters changing their affiliation to Unaffiliated and is also suppressing voter turnout.

4. Oversight of elections is critical in reviewing voter rolls, using good election judges and poll watchers.

5. Promoting Republican philosophies, candidates and increasing registration of Republican voters is critically important.

6. Pushing voter turnout through voter contacts and “ballot harvesting” needs to be increased.

7. Voters in Delta County are not choosing to vote in person. Only 704 people (Or 4%) voted in person in the 2022 General Election (319 in Delta, 101 in Orchard City and 204 at the North Fork Annex in Hotchkiss. Delta was open for 15 days, NFA for 3 days and OC for 1 day).

8. Under current Colorado law (CRS 1-5-612 (b) it is illegal for Counties to not use computers to tabulate votes for all elections.

I hope I have adequately explained why the continuing push that voter fraud/change the voting system is not working for us in Colorado. We can win elections – we did here in Delta County in 2022. We need to get our fellow Republicans to use some of the same strategies that we used. As I said earlier, I know some of you are going to disagree with what I have just said. But I presented the data I used to come to this conclusion and I have not found any actual data that supports the claim of widespread voter fraud. I will keep monitoring claims of voter fraud, but so far, I have not found any actual and factual proof that it has occurred on an organized widespread basis. Let’s elect Republicans and get the radical, destructive Democrats out of office!

David Bradford

Chairman, Delta County Republican Central Committee

PS –Remember you can donate to the Delta County Republican Central Committee, by going to our website https://www.deltacoloradogop.com. Since we won’t have the Headquarters open for most of this year, donations are critical in helping build up our bank account so we have funds for supporting our candidates in the 2024 election. An individual donation of $20 is a great small donation. It also has the advantage of not having to report all the personal information of the donor to the Secretary of State. But whatever you can help with would be very helpful and much appreciated. You can also donate in person at our monthly meeting. Our next scheduled meeting is Tuesday, April 4th at the Surface Creek Community Church in Austin. Hope to see you there! Thank you! db