'Hard stop for me': GOP clerks buck Trump’s 'power grab' demand for voter 'inspections'
U.S. President Donald Trump attends the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit, at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S., July 15, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard
The Washington Post reports Republican election clerks are leery of entertaining the Trump administration’s recent push to scrutinize voters and voting equipment.
“That’s a hard stop for me,” said Carly Koppes, a Republican clerk in Colorado’s Weld County, who told reporters she’d rejected a Trump operative’s request to allow a federal inspection. “Nobody gets access to my voting equipment, for security reasons.”
Colorado election officials received calls and messages from White staffer Jeff Small, a consultant who has worked for Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), requesting they help Trump “ensure the integrity of elections and to advance Trump’s election agenda.”
READ MORE: 'I'm done with this': Retiring GOP senator uses profanity in veiled threat to Trump
“To me, it felt like they were wanting to intervene before 2026,” said Justin Grantham, the Republican clerk in Colorado’s Fremont County, who the Post reports denied Small’s request to allow a third party to review whether his voting machines complied with federal law.
Trump’s Department of Justice has already asked at least nine states for copies of their voter rolls, and at least two have turned them over. The department has also asked states to share information about voters to better comply with Trump’s March executive order, which critics say could prevent millions of Americans from voting.
The president made clear in a lengthy social media post that he still wants FBI head Kash Patel to focus on 2020 election falsehoods, including: “investigating Voter Fraud, Political Corruption, ActBlue, The Rigged and Stolen Election of 2020,” among other priorities.
But the Post reports clerks in Colorado are still nervous about former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters, who was sentenced to nine years in prison last year over a scheme to give an outsider unauthorized access to secure areas of her office to copy election data.
READ MORE: 'Interesting nugget': CNN data guru says Americans have rarely been so united
This year, Trump’s Justice Department is assisting Peters with her appeal.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold told the Post she compared Trump’s recent meddling to his unsuccessful push to overthrow the 2020 election, which ended with riots at the U.S. Capitol in 2021.
“This is the 2020 playbook on steroids,” said Griswold. “… They are actively in a power grab.”
Read the full Washington Post report at this link.
