As Donald Trump campaigned in Colorado over the weekend, he questioned the integrity of the state’s mail-ballot elections. He first raised the issue during a rally in Golden on Saturday and then continued during a 45-minute speech Sunday in Greeley, at the University of Northern Colorado.
The Republican nominee for president urged the crowd of roughly 3,000 people to “get those ballots in” and then questioned whether those ballots “would be properly counted.”
In Golden, Trump said he had “real problems with ballots being sent.”
Those statements put him at odds with a fellow Republican — the person charged with seeing that Colorado’s elections will be fair and fraud-free, Wayne Williams, Colorado’s secretary of state.
Lynn Bartels, his spokesperson, rebuffed Trump’s allegations and insisted that the electoral process in the state is “incredibly secure,” adding that voter fraud is rare.
I can't watch the tweets on what @realDonaldTrump is saying about our incredibly secure elections in CO. I will go nuts. #copolitics
— Lynn Bartels (@lynn_bartels) October 29, 2016
She said Colorado’s election process has safeguards, such as ballot drop-off boxes that are secure around the clock, to assurances that the state’s voting machines aren’t connected to the internet where they could be hacked. Fraud can happen, Bartels acknowledges, “but there is not wholesale rigging of the system.”
Trump has been trailing Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in credible Colorado polls throughout October. The latest aggregate of polls shows Trump four points behind Clinton.
But Trump’s senior advisor in Colorado, Patrick Davis, said Trump believes he can win Colorado. Trump has visited the state for at least 10 events this election cycle. That compares with Clinton’s three visits to the state. The state’s voters are roughly divided into three equal groups: Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters.
“I think in the end it will end up paying dividends for Donald Trump -- showing up and spending the time listening to us and talking with us about our concerns here in Colorado,” Davis said.
Early voting indicates that so far, Democrats are more excited to vote. They have a 31,000 ballot advantage as of Oct. 31. with 23 percent of ballots returned.
During his visit to Greeley, Trump touched on a few other familiar themes, including immigration reform, building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and rebuilding the military. He also talked about ending the so-called “war on American energy” he says his opponent is waging.
“Hillary Clinton also wants to put your miners out of work,” he told the crowd at the university. “My administration would put the miners back to work and we will unleash the power of clean coal, oil, natural gas and shale energy.”
Outside the Bank of Colorado Arena at UNC, a group of nearly 100 protesters carried homemade signs reading “I’m a nasty woman” and “The White House is not a locker room – stay out.”
Both were references to recent statements Trump has made about women.
Greeley resident Sylvia Martinez attended the rally to protest what she says is Trump’s divisiveness and mistreatment of women.
“The fact that he’s, you know, on audio recordings indicating what he does and likes to do to women without their permission — how is that acceptable to anybody?” Martinez said. “If that was anybody out on the street, they’d be in jail. So how is that okay for the candidate for the Presidency to say and to do? It’s not acceptable.”