The Republican nominee for Colorado Secretary of State, James Wiley, says one of his “first priorities” would be to delete Colorado’s voter rolls completely. Under his plan, every voter in the state would have to re-register – in person – to be allowed to vote. Wiley proposed his plan late last month on conservative talk radio host Kim Monson’s afternoon show.
Kim Monson: What’s one of the first things that you’re going to do when elected Secretary of State?
James Wiley: “One of my first priorities is going to be with the voter rolls to begin to audit them, to begin to review them, and if possible, to delete them. It’s really important that we get back to voter rolls that only contain registered voters and eligible citizens. That’s not the case currently.
I was doing an audit of the voter rules using a system called ELLY, and I was able to determine that almost a million of the registered voters in the state of Colorado have questions about their proper registration because they may have moved out of the state. They may have passed away. Comparing that to the other databases in the USPS or the Social Security Administration database where people have passed away, there’s far too many records that have issues when compared to those other databases.
So I would recommend deleting the entire thing. I’m going to work towards that. And starting from scratch, if you’re still alive, if you still live in Colorado, if you’re eligible to vote, you can come in and re-register. And from that point forward, we’ll have clean rolls that we can maintain and empower the clerks. So the biggest problem is the clerks don’t have the ability to clean their own rolls. And so just empowering the clerk to do their job is going to make everybody’s life easier.”
There are more than a few problems with Wiley’s plan, not the least of which is, it’s illegal under both federal and state law.
At the national level, the 1993 National Voter Registration Act and the 2002 Help America Vote Act set the rules for voter registration and for removing voters from the rolls for inactivity, as opposed to dying or moving. HAVA permits the removal of voters who do not respond to an address confirmation mailing and then don’t vote for two federal general elections. County clerks are constantly updating their lists using information they receive from a variety of other databases, including USPS change of address forms, death certificates, felony convictions, etc.
Wiley, who falsely believes President Donald Trump won the 2020 election, has yet to put a dollar amount on his plan, but a 2024 bill introduced by state Rep. Ken Degraaf (R-Colorado Springs) offers at least a minimum cost estimate. DeGraaf also wanted to require every Colorado voter to re-register, though his legislation would have permitted online confirmation of name, address, and eligibility. The bill, which died in its first committee hearing, carried a fiscal note of $9.3 million. Adding in-person registration at the county level would likely increase that amount, though the cost could perhaps come down on the counties instead of the state.
Reached via email, Wiley acknowledges that his proposal would require legal changes, but insists they are necessary to “improve security.”
“Like many of the election reforms I am proposing, changes to the law will be required to improve security,” says Wiley. “When one assesses the challenge of fixing voter rolls with a 25% anomaly rate, the question is raised; would it be easier to start over? I believe this is a valid concern given the record of the previous administration on voter roll maintenance and the need for [the Libertarian Party of Colorado] LPCO and Judicial Watch to repeatedly sue Jena to force her into compliance with the law.
Wiley’s claim of a “25% anomaly rate” is a reference to his previous on-air statement that he conducted an “audit” of the Colorado voter rolls using third-party software called ELLY. Created by a Georgia-based election conspiracist, the program claims to compare voter data with other large databases of public information with the goal of purging illegal voters. It has been repeatedly dismissed by experts as unreliable and could “vastly over-inflate potentially inaccurate voter registrations.”
His claim that lawsuits by the LPCO and Judicial Watch “forced her into compliance” also requires some context. Judicial Watch sued SOS Griswold in 2020, claiming her office wasn’t removing ineligible voters according to federal law. A settlement reached in 2023 concluded with her office denying all of Judicial Watch’s claims of having broken federal law, and an agreement for the state to provide the conservative group with public data about its annual removal totals for five years. The LPCO, then led by Wiley who worked as the party’s executive director, sued Griswold on November 1, 2024, 96 hours before Election Day. LPCO claimed Griswold’s inadvertent posting of voting machine passwords required her to decommission all the electronic voting machines and instead hand count the election. A judge threw out the complaint three days later.
Asked by CTR whether he believes Colorado’s clerks will support a plan that would require them to re-register every voter in their county in person, and specifically if he could name any who do, Wiley offered the following response:
“I believe in supporting, not controlling the clerks. If they believe that the best way to clean the rolls in their county is to start from scratch, I would trust their judgement as the chief election officials in their own communities. At present, Clerks are forced to maintain ineligible voters on their rolls, oftentimes despite clear proof of ineligibility. Compelling Clerks to send ballots to voters to have passed away or moved out of state isn’t Clerk empowerment. Jena’s rein of terror must come to an end.”
Wiley did not name any clerks who support his plan.
At least one current clerk rejects Wiley’s plan for multiple reasons. “The suggestion that Colorado should ‘delete’ its voter rolls is illegal, irresponsible, and reflects a profound misunderstanding of basic election law—which is especially concerning for someone seeking to become the state’s chief election official,” said Jefferson County Clerk Amanda Gonzalez in an emailed statement.
Gonzalez, who like Wiley is also running to be Secretary of State, also noted that “forcing millions of Coloradans to re-register would overwhelm election offices, dramatically increase costs, create widespread confusion, and disenfranchise countless eligible voters.”
Criticism of Wiley’s proposal isn’t limited to Democratic election experts. Republican Matt Crane, the executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, offered a blunt assessment of his party’s nominee’s proposal.
“It just shows how little he knows about election law or how elections work, and shows to me how unserious he is about this work and understanding what the office of the secretary does,” says Crane. “Quite frankly, it’s just stunningly stupid.”
Asked about Wiley’s assertion that his “audit” of the state rolls turned up a million questionable voter records, Crane warned of the dangers of using home-made software.
“Data-matching is really hard, and these third-party tools are notoriously not good at it, which is why ERIC, the Electronic Registration Information Center, is such a wonderful tool for election integrity because they have figured out how to do this data matching really well,” says Crane. “So relying on those third-party tools, not understanding how unreliable they are, and then going out and saying, ‘Oh, I use this, and it shows definitively this’ is just incredibly reckless.”
Via email, CTR asked Colorado GOP Chair Craig Steiner, who recently announced a series of state party goals including, “maintain accurate voter rolls through regular verification,” whether the party supports Wiley’s plan to delete every Colorado voter’s registration, but did not receive a reply. This article will be updated with any response received.
