GILPIN ELECTION VIDEO SURVEILLANCE CLIPS >>>>>>> click “Read More” 👇
Dear Friends,
If you’ve read my blog posts around the General Election, you will know what I went through in order to try and do my job as a Signature Verification Watcher. To no avail. The purpose of the job is to have oversight to be sure only legitimate ballots are counted.
Our County Clerk, Sahari McCormick, wrote her own rules that kept Watchers from having visual access to the ballot envelope signatures. I tried to get her to listen to the law, but she dismissed me and I had to make a choice: be escorted out of the building by a Sheriff’s officer, or be arrested and spend a night in jail. After being told by the officer the arrest would include handcuffs, escort in a cop car to jail, booking on a misdemeanor charge, overnight stay, arraignment, bail and return to defend my position in front of a judge within the next couple of months (Christmas time), I reluctantly chose to leave. I had done nothing wrong.
I am a 71-year-old grandmother that was volunteering to serve our election and was dismissed for “disrupting the election process” for telling Sahari I have the right to see the ballot signatures. I moved my chair three inches over her taped line on the floor! How much more of this is Gilpin County willing to take? Sahari still has two years left to her term, which includes another election to control.
Marie Mornis, the Chair of the Gilpin County Republican Committee, requested the video surveillance from October 22, 2024 (the day this happened). Gilpin County sent 90 chopped-up videos of the Election Workroom, many of which were missing pertinent evidence. The paralegal who filled the CORA request denied any editing, but said they were motion-activated cameras, and without motion, the camera stops. Right.
YOU be the judge. 👇
Here are the pertinent rules…
Colorado Secretary of State Election Rules [8 CCR 1505-1]:
8.10.2 Watchers must be permitted access that would allow them to attest to the accuracy of election-related activities. This includes personal visual access at a reasonable proximity to read documents, writings or electronic screens and reasonable proximity to hear election-related discussions between election judges and electors.
8.16 If a watcher disputes a decision made by an election judge or alleges a discrepancy, the watcher must alert the designated watcher contact.
Here is a video comprised of 14 short videos of the treatment I received by this Clerk that day:
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Tap this address, and watch the video:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oa1_r8xIVHlmnnrQdVPIDoC05wpLROeT/view?usp=drivesdk
THIS CANNOT HAPPEN AGAIN! It took the Secretary of State investigator to come up and tell the Clerk she cannot put the Watchers in any box at any distance - she must free the Watchers! But 10 days of the 13.5 days of Signature Verification were not “watched.” Not free. Not fair. Other Watchers volunteered four-hour shifts each of those 10 days and could see nothing…until Clerk McCormick’s overreach was halted by the investigator.
Do you have any idea how the citizens of Gilpin County stop this from happening next year? I would appreciate your input.
I want to thank my friend, John Dunham, for his expertise in creating one video of the election surveillance clips. I couldn’t have done it without him. ☺
Thank you for reading, researching and sharing the light! Feel free to write to me any time.
Donna Okray Parman
Founder, The Gilpin Light
