The Denver Post: Is Colorado’s elections chief too political? Jena Griswold fights criticism of Trump-focused partisanship.

The following is an excerpt from The Denver Post:

‍Trump’s election loss 20 years later put the office [of secretary of state] into hyper-focus, highlighted by an early January 2021 phone call made by the then-president to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Trump, who was recorded, suggested that the Republican elections chief “find” more than 11,000 votes to ensure a Trump victory in the state won by Democrat Joe Biden.

“The secretary of state used to be a backwater — now it’s high profile,” said Kevin Johnson, executive director of the Bethesda, Maryland-based Election Reformers Network.

A big part of the problem rests with how election administration is run in the United States, Johnson said.

“They manage a process that is adversarial in nature and they need to be impartial in overseeing that process,” he said of election officials. “Voters want to see neutrality in the comportment of the leader of elections.”

Colorado is one of 31 states where the secretary of state is chosen in a statewide election. In another seven states, the governor or legislature appoints the secretary. In 10 states, a board of elections, rather than a secretary of state, oversees elections, while in Utah and Alaska, the lieutenant governor is the chief elections officer.

Johnson’s organization has sketched out a way to reduce, if not eliminate, partisanship from election administration by forming a bipartisan state election board that includes members with legal and election expertise.

“Our elections officials are elected in partisan elections — no other democratic country in the world does that,” Johnson said. “The reason no other country does that is it leads to conflicts of interest.”

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