Voting 411 with County Clerk, Steve Schleikler

By Nancy Murray

The purpose of the public meeting was to allow Mr. Schleiker an opportunity to update El Paso County citizens on how elections are conducted in El Paso County. His stated goal on the flyer was to “avoid disinformation and get the real details on voting in El Paso Co.”

The meeting was scheduled approximately one month after the release of the Executive Order “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.” Attendees were asked to register in advance and given an opportunity to submit a question. There were five members of the RSF in attendance.

The first hour, Mr. Schleiker referred to prepared slides. His Disinformation slide has a bullet that reads “Common Election Myths – Claims about deceased voters, rigged machines, or discarded ballots often circulate without evidence.” Those of us in the Election Integrity Group, know that there is plenty of evidence of election fraud with the machines and ballots.

Mr. Schleiker discussed the improvements he has made since being elected as County Clerk. Improvements include video monitoring of drop boxes, mail tracking system of the mail-in ballots from printing to delivery to the voter, enhanced training on signature verification, new tabulation and vote center equipment, comprehensive election results website, and ballot verification/auditing project.

Mr. Schleiker mentioned that the number of registered voters in El Paso County has increased to over 500,000. As a result, they will be adding another voting center and three more ballot drop boxes. He is researching possible locations now.

The last slide discussed was the proposed HR 22 SAVE Act which has passed the House. It was clear that Mr. Schleiker does not support this Act. Many of the attendees were concerned about the sub-bullet “Imposes penalties for non-compliance.” Mr. Schleiker implied that election judges will not want to participate in the election process in fear of arrest if they make a mistake. In my opinion, it was all fear mongering because the purpose is to discourage those from deliberately violating the law and allowing non-citizens to vote.

We started to discuss the Executive Order on Election Integrity, but it was surprising that he did not have a slide summarizing this EO since it was our impression that this is the purpose for the public meeting in the first place.

There was a lengthy discussion on enhancing the registration process that will require proof of citizenship for new voter registrations. The current CO statute allows many forms of ids to register, many of which do not even include a photo id, to include utility bills and student id’s. With the new EO, these forms of id’s will not be allowed with the new Federal registration form. CO also requires the individual to self-attest their citizenship, which the EO will no longer allow. 

One attendee expressed concern about women that change their name not being allowed to register, Mr. Schleiker did not attempt to ease her concerns. Anyone that has changed their name, such as myself, knows that this will not hinder registering to vote, just like it didn’t hinder the ability to get a new drivers license. There was also concern about needing to pay for a passport to register, this is more disinformation that Mr. Schleiker should have nipped in the bud! The passport is just another possible form of id to prove citizenship and is not required to register.

Mr. Schleiker mentioned the Make Election Safe Again (MESA) Act, but not in detail. He only mentioned that it is coming soon.

Mr. Schleiker discussed his efforts to reduce the number of undeliverable ballots. In his first election there were 49,000 undeliverable ballots. He contracted with Experian to help compare the El Paso County voter rolls to the Experian database to identify registrations that do not have a credit file with Experian or has a different address than on the voter rolls. Experian is more accurate because addresses are updated frequently with changes to an individual’s credit file. With the 2024 general election, the number of undeliverable ballots dropped to 17,000, which is still excessive when you consider the cost for each ballot.

There was discussion about ERIC (Electronic Registration Information Center) and how it is used to help maintain the CO voter rolls. Several states have dropped from ERIC, which reduces the information sharing of voters between states. My comment was that ERIC does not have a very good reputation, which is probably why there were 49,000 undeliverable ballots in the first election managed by Mr. Schleiker. Col (ret) Shawn Smith with Cause of America stated on 4/28/25 in his State of the Union Address on X-Spaces, that the purpose of ERIC was to “inflate” the voter rolls. The 49,000 undeliverable ballots would seem to  validate this claim.

Mr. Schleiker did not have time to respond to our submitted questions but concluded the meeting saying that he would send us his response to each question within the next few days. When I receive the questions and responses, I will update this article. 

I must admit that I was disappointed that we didn’t discuss the EO other than to say that El Paso County is 85% in compliance. In my opinion, the EO will significantly impact how the County Clerk executes elections because the equipment used does not comply with the minimum standards of critical infrastructure because it is manufactured in China and there is no election system today that would comply. My written question to Mr. Schleiker was “is he prepared to run elections at the precinct level when the election equipment loses certification and cannot be used in the next Federal election?”

As we finished, I was able to approach Mr. Shleiker to ask him a few questions. He mentioned that he just testified on four new election bills and they all passed. We didn’t discuss this any further, but we did discuss these bills at the RSF meeting the following morning. 

I then asked him if Wayne Williams shared the fact that he received a demo by Mark Cook on the copy of the Dominion backup. He said that Mr. Williams had not shared any info. I stated that I was not surprised because it did not reflect well on Mr. Williams. I mentioned that I shared the three Mesa county reports with Mr. Williams because he had not read them, even though he ran the election when Tina Peters was fired. I then provided him a copy of my Memorandum for the Record of the demo with Mr. Williams from November 20, 2024. Mr. Schleiker said he would read it and give me a call the next day. I’m still waiting on that call – when he does call, I will provide and update. 

UPDATE:

I never received that call from Mr. Schleiker, but to his credit we did exchange a few emails to include two official written responses on letterhead.

He did address each paragraph in my memorandum for the record. Bottomline, Wayne Williams is no longer a public official for El Paso County and cannot speak for the county. El Paso County maintains strict chain of custody of all equipment to include an “air gap”. To his credit (again) he commended us for staying engaged in the election process in El Paso County.

His second formal response outlined many of the topics he discussed at the 411 meeting and how EPC is addressing each issue. It was clear that he read my article in last week’s newsletter (he receives the newsletter because he registered through our website) because he addressed several of my comments in his letter. (Thank you Steve!)

He did say that he supported the SAVE act, even though most of the other CO County Clerks did not. He also corrected himself in saying the “Make Elections Secure Again” has not been introduced as official legislation.

With regards to having a cyber security expert on staff “I’ve partnered closely with El Paso County’s IT Department and our in-house cybersecurity experts to ensure robust protections remain in place for our systems and data.”

I did have to ask a third time for a response to my question from the meeting. My written question to Mr. Schleiker was “is he prepared to run elections at the precinct level when the election equipment loses certification and cannot be used in the next Federal election?”

His response: “Regarding your original question from the VOTE 411 meeting and the examples you shared about election results in Adams County, I appreciate you bringing that forward.  While I can’t speak to data patterns in other counties, that I’ve not had an opportunity to review, I can say with utmost confidence that here in El Paso County, our elections are conducted under strict protocols.  If you’d like, I’d be happy to walk you and others through our ballot tabulation, election, and audit processes in way more detail.” In other words, he does not believe that the election equipment will lose certification for Federal Elections.

I do appreciate Mr. Schleiker’s efforts to address our concerns, but he isn’t going to be able to deny he wasn’t warned.