One of my favorite things, when people find out I work in elections administration, they're like, wow, that sounds interesting.

What do you do the other 364 days a year?

But this is very serious work by very serious people, to make sure that we run elections that are accessible, secure, fair, transparent, for the people who live here in Colorado.

I am the Executive Director of the Colorado County Clerks Association.

I have worked in election administration in Colorado since the year 2000.

I consult with the federal government on election security issues.

It's fair to say I'm very much an election geek.

[crowd noise] We are in very challenging times, for election administration.

The losers lament is not something that's new.

We have people who, when they lose, they cry fraud, they cry suppression, all of these things without any evidence.

Because, it's very tough for some people to accept that they lost.

But we've never seen anything like we have after the 2020 election where a sitting president, puts forth lies and disinformation about elections.

People use the stolen election narrative now for political purposes, for financial purposes.

And so that's really had a damaging effect on election administration, on the people who work in this field.

It's actually our citizens who run our elections as election judges.

So it's your it's your fellow church members, your PTA members, your synagogue members, your, Elks Lodge members.

Right.

You're your neighbor next door.

These are the men and women who dedicate time to come in and actually do signature verification.

They count ballots.

They go and pick up the ballots in bipartisan teams from drop boxes.

It's your friends and neighbors who are doing this work.

So when you attack an election process, you think, oh, well, it's just a clerk there no you're attacking the entire community of men and women who dedicate themselves, to this work.

So we have to be aggressive with the truth in the public square so that people can know what really happens.

These threats are very real, very serious.

And in the face of that, clerks are still being open and wanting people to come in to see, to rebuild that public trust and that public confidence We've had some really, courageous clerics who have invited election deniers into serve as election judges.

You know, and they've left and said, well, at least I feel better about it in my county.

Like this, my county does it right.

I may not trust County X, but at least my county does it right.

That's a big win.

So I think that we see that opportunity group slowly shifting towards the truth.

And so if you really want to know how elections work, come join us.

We want you to learn the truth from the experts, not the lies from the grifters.

The processes are set in statute and rule.

Which is why if you trust it in Douglas, you should also trust it in Denver.

If you trust it in Boulder, you should also trust it in El Paso.

This is called the Agilis mail ballot sorting machine.

This machine really revolutionized ballot processing and made it much, much faster, much, much more efficient.

We have bipartisan teams in just about every step of the process.

Our voting system goes to a thorough, thorough certification process.

We test and audit these systems before and after each election.

You can see lots of cameras around the room.

They have to be on 24/7, 365.

We're not here saying, trust us and don't ever look under the hood.

We're saying, here's everything we have.

We'd like you to trust us, but you don't have to.

You can go and do an independent validation yourself.

The clerks do tours where they invite people in while ballots are being processed.

So if you don't want to be an election judge and come in and do the work, maybe time commitments through work or family doesn't allow that.

You can still come in and take a tour where the clerk and staff will walk you through the facility, explain everything in great detail, and answer every question that you have.

I'm a Republican and, my wife, used to work for Dominion Voting Systems.

She does some contract work.

But it's been interesting that, you know, people take that fact and the fact that I've stood up from right after the 2020 election and said the stolen election narrative is not true.

And people have, you know, made it a point to come after my wife and I up to and including death threats against she and I and our children.

But we made a decision early in this that we have to keep plowing through.

We are going to do everything we can to be transparent and run great elections and meet bad information in the public square with the truth.

People have fought and died for this right.

So the fact that people are using this for political and financial purposes is beyond disgusting.

Quite frankly, I would say it's un-American.

You know, if people don't speak up, bad actors when.