ASHE IN AMERICA
— OPINION
Most Coloradans – and Americans – are familiar with Mesa County and the tale of Tina Peters.
Lesser known is the story of Elbert County and former Clerk and Recorder Dallas Schroeder. Schroeder is currently an Elbert County Commissioner and is running for reelection. Clerk Schroeder also took forensic images of Dominion machines prior to Griswold’s 2021 “trusted build,” though he successfully avoided the political persecution of Tina Peters.
Why? Because taking images of voting machines was lawful in 2021. It didn’t become unlawful until 2022 and the Colorado Election Security Act (SB22-153).
The difference between Tina Peters and Dallas Schroeder is that Dallas took the images himself, while Tina Peters hired an outside expert to do the job — and she made some missteps in the execution for which she has expressed contrition.
Clerk Schroeder imaged the Elbert machines in 2021. Secretary of State Jena Griswold didn’t find out about it until Schroeder disclosed the existence of the images in a lawsuit against her later that year.
In court in November 2022, former Deputy Secretary of State Chris Beall got quite heated about Clerk Schroeder’s beliefs, concluding that his speech made him a security risk. “…those statements caused us to understand him. Clerk Schroeder is a security risk,” Beall said.
He also lost his temper, stating, “…this fight to um, PROVE that uh the 2020 election was, was tampered with. uh, It’s a fantasy!”
He then apologized for his outburst.
Upon learning about the existence of these images, Secretary Griswold repeated the playbook she used with Peters, sending a flurry of press releases slandering the Elbert Officials and telling the public there was a “breach.”
A legal battle ensued and, following a court order, Schroeder delivered all copies of the images to Secretary Griswold.
Griswold and CDOS also appointed a babysitter to oversee future Elbert elections. Note that was the year that Tina Peters was on the ballot, running for Secretary of State.
Elbert county is small with around 25,000 active voters currently (it was ~22,000 in 2022). The CDOS consultant/babysitter was present from the beginning to the end of the primary election in Elbert County. She produced a report that suggested the county buy bigger monitors.
Note that pretty much every recommendation in the report is preceded with some variation of, “While the county operated in accordance with applicable law…” In other words, “I got nothing, but I have to come up with some sort of recommendations or Jena won’t pay me.”
Think I am exaggerating? From the report summary:
“Elbert County conducted the day-to-day operations of administering the 2022 Primary Election through Election Day in substantial compliance with applicable laws and rules… The County appears well-equipped to conduct future elections with current staff, facilities, and resources. Therefore, it is my recommendation that the Secretary terminate her Election Order 2022-09, dated June 9, 2022, at this time.” Read the full report on my substack.
Note that Secretary Griswold ignored the finding from her appointed babysitter to terminate supervision — the babysitter was also present for the general election in November 2022. Elbert County continued to have CDOS elections babysitters through 2024.
“If there is nothing to hide, and Colorado is the ‘Gold Standard,’ then I challenge Ms. Griswold to use our images and prove it,” Dallas Schroeder said in 2022. He was ignored.
CDOS made a huge media splash with at least four press releases attacking Elbert County elected and elections officials. Those press releases are also archived and linked on my substack.
The department would likely say they issued all those slanderous releases to keep the public informed. But then they ignored the report’s recommendations and went silent in the press when the Elbert officials were vindicated. CDOS literally never told the citizens of Colorado the end of the story.
And it gets worse.
CDOS never sent the report — the report with the findings and recommendations — to Clerk Schroeder. That’s strange, because the clerk is the official who would be required to implement the findings and recommendations, and they never sent it to him.
The conduct of CDOS towards Elbert County, alone, implies that this whole saga wasn’t about election administration or security at all. It was about political narratives and ostensible cover ups.
Abuse of power.
Weaponization of government.
While CDOS didn’t send the report to the county, they did send an invoice — for $30,000.
Why is this important now? The key question is: What is going on with these images?
Has CDOS analyzed the drives? What did they find? Have they been compared to the Mesa images? Do they still have them? Are they going to publicly apologize for their treatment of Elbert County, Schroeder, and his team?
Clerk Schroeder asked for the images back a couple of times according to sources close to the matter. First he was told that the matter was still under investigation then, later, he was told that the images were on a litigation hold for the case against Tina Peters. Schroeder was prevented from testifying at Peters’ August 2024 trial, after being sworn in.
For my part, I’ve always believed those images were destroyed. I made a bet to that effect.
I’d be extremely happy to lose that bet.
As Schroeder said: If they have nothing to hide, they should prove it.
Ashe Epp is a local writer, host, and activist. Find all her work at linktree.com/asheinamerica.
