Pam Anderson wins GOP nomination for Colorado secretary of state over Tina Peters

Former Jefferson County Clerk Pam Anderson won the Republican nomination for secretary of state Tuesday night, defeating election denier and indicted county Clerk Tina Peters.

As of 9:45 p.m, Anderson had about 44% of the vote. Yuma County resident Mike O’Donnell had about 29% of the vote. Peters fell in third place with about 27% of the vote. The Associated Press called the race at about 8 p.m.

Anderson will face incumbent Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold in November.

Tuesday’s results were a rebuke of Peters’ brand of election denialism. Anderson has rejected the false claims that voter fraud affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

Peters has been at the center of a national controversy for allegedly facilitating a security breach in the Mesa County elections office that led to online posting of passwords and copies of the election management system. She was indicted by a grand jury for a combination of felony and misdemeanor charges for those alleged actions.

A district judge barred Peters from overseeing the 2021 coordinated election and all 2022 elections in Mesa County in light of the security concerns.

It didn’t take long for Peters to deny Tuesday’s election results.

“We didn’t lose. We just found out more fraud. As I was looking at results, it was so obvious that it should be flipped,” Peters told a small crowd of supporters at a watch party at the Wide Open Saloon in Sedalia, upstairs from where University of Colorado Regent Heidi Ganahl was celebrating a victory in the primary race for the Republican gubernatorial nomination.

There is no evidence of election fraud in the primary.

The Colorado Democratic Party called Anderson a “career politician who has proven that she cannot be trusted to stand up to the far-right members of the Republican party” in a statement following the results, though they noted that Colorado voters chose the “non-indicted” candidate.