File Photo by PHILIP B. POSTON/Sentinel Colorado
You know the feeling.
You’re out and about taking care of the stuff that you put off as long as you can, trudging into the grocery store, waiting in line at the bank, watching the numbers whiz by on the gas pump, when you notice it.
Someone’s looking or staring at you.
Sometimes it’s someone who thinks you look like a long-lost friend, or that they know you from somewhere but can’t place it. Sometimes it’s just someone watching you for no good reason while you’re waiting to take your turn at the Post Office counter to mail a package as a favor to a neighbor.
Soon, it could be a fan of former Colorado gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl out to watch or film you put your mail ballot in your neighborhood collection box.
If that strikes you as creepy, intimidating and possibly illegal, you’re not alone.
You might not remember Ganahl. She’s had a tough time getting Colorado residents to pay much attention to her since she ran for governor against Jared Polis and lost in 2022.
What you might remember is that she also had a hard time getting much media attention even then with her campaign. When she did, it was sometimes because she kept tap dancing around whether she was an election denier and believer in the Big Lie.
The mystery was solved when she chose Republican Danny Moore as her running mate for lieutenant governor in 2022. She chose Moore despite his having been booted out as chairperson of the state’s bi-partisan redistricting committee in 2021. Committee members agreed unanimously to remove Moore as chairperson after he made several remarks on social media making it clear he was neck deep in Trump’s conspiracies.
“What we know for sure is that mass mail-in ballots can be controlled by the people you give them to (the Postman, ballot counters.) Once you hand them over you lose any voice you thought you had,” Moore wrote. In another post, he questioned how Biden could have ever amassed more than 80 million votes nationwide, against Trump.
Ganahl dismissed Moore’s denier gaffes and said about the 2022 “steal,” there weren’t enough fraudulent votes in Colorado to sway the results.
Her candidacy ended with political self-immolation when she tried to persuade voters that a tsunami of children were “presenting” as cats, dogs and “furries” in JeffCo schools and that teachers and others were setting up litter boxes to accommodate them.
Nostalgically, a woman supporting Trump at his Aurora rally last week trotted her kids up to the stage to relay a similar story for about 10,000 of the faithful. The mom said the kids at school have to step over feces on the school floors that the kid-cats and urchin-dogs drop all over the school.
Ganahl has gone from tipping back a few glasses of denier Kool-Aid to dispensing it to her fan club through a fire hose on her X account.
She said she researched Colorado vote counting for two years and determined that all the Democrat and Republican clerks across the state are wrong in assuring voters elections are secure and accurate.
So she’s actively enlisting what she hopes to be an army of fellow deniers to join her group of “Citizen Drop Box Observers.”
“With so many people having questions around election integrity, we are excited to provide ways for citizens to engage with the process and legally provide oversight that will increase the confidence in the ultimate outcomes,” she says on the sign-up page.
Real election workers? Not so much.
If this brings back icky memories, locally, it probably comes from the 2020 incident where two men wearing fatigues and gats went into Arapahoe County headquarters in Littleton and started filming people as they came into the building to vote. The armed men made it so that voters had to pass them both ways to get in and out of the building.
Despite police and state worry, there was nothing anyone could do because it was legal to strap one on just about anywhere back then.
Intimidating? You bet, said Arapahoe County Clerk Joan Lopez and Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold. So much so that they persuaded the Colorado Legislature to pass House Bill 1086 in 2022.
Now law, it tightens up restrictions on just how far you can go with your heater around election sites. The law says no closer than 100 feet from places where voting occurs.
That includes ballot boxes, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement Monday. He points out to residents that acting “aggressively” toward people 100 feet or closer to a ballot box is a jailable offense.
What Ganahl’s Voter Voyeurs do at the boxes, and how close, is unclear.
Ganahl didn’t respond to requests for comment about whether she’s advising her league of voter voyeurs to leave their Glocks at home while out to “engage with the process and legally provide oversight that will increase the confidence in the ultimate outcomes.”
The situation could call for a need to watch the watchers. You can see where this is going.
When I asked Griswold on Friday if she has concerns about the scheme, she said she does. She’s waiting to see how many enlist in the program, and what they actually do.
She recommends to anyone who feels intimidated by Ganahl’s “observers” to call their county election office, or even police.
The notion to put ballot watching in motion is drawing bi-partisan winces already.
Former Colorado of State Republican candidate Pam Anderson, who was the Jefferson County clerk, offered this advice as a response to a social media post by Ganahl soliciting for people to join her band of lookers.
“Contact your party, unaffiliated candidate, pro or con issue committee to be a legal CO watcher or even better — election judge,” Anderson said in her reply to Ganahl’s X post. “You will actually have more access to observe the election. As a legal and official watcher you can be in closer proximity & not a kinda weird lurker.”
But if you’re into being weird and lurking, Ganahl says she can hook you up.
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Any lurkers observing my exercise of the vote — around my ballot drop-off box — will be recorded for posterity on my handy phone/camera. As you point out, lurkers gotta be watched by somebody.
Ganahl needs to get a life already. We should be past all of this tom-foolery. Sixty+ lawsuits at the federal and state level were either dismissed or thrown out after the 2020 election. We must accept with collective faith that the election process is safe. Both Republican and Democratic Secretaries of State around the country take this job very seriously. Just because some 80-year-old orange orangutan says there’s cheating doesn’t make it so. Look at his record on telling truths. He lies even when it’s more advantageous to tell the truth.
ya know…the ones who scream overkill are USUALLY the ones doing the dirty…..YES WE WILL WATCH DROP BOXES AFTER THE DABACLE OF THE 2020 ELECTION……WHAT’S THAT YOU SAY??????/
The sad sack right gets worse with time. Whatever happened to normal conservatism? MAGA has grown about as “weird” as it gets. As a former fan of the late Bill Buckley, I like to ponder what he would think of this current crop of MAGA fools and what Trump has done to make once proud GOP of Reagan into a clown show and a dangerous one at that. Heidi is an extremist fool.
Well folks,
This is all thanks to the “Orange headed hair comb over Dear Leader.”
It astounds me that there are people so stupid to believe his bullshit. And you know he is probably laughing at them as well. In a 1995 People Magazine article he said as much.
Hey MAGA nuts, follow Donald’s dance moves to the Village People’s “YMCA”. He is quite the mover and groover. Just don’t move too much or too fast as you might pee or crap in your “Depends”.