In early 2021, Democrats in Congress pushed HR1, a sweeping national elections bill. All but one House Democrat — including every Democrat from Colorado — voted for it. Every Republican opposed, and it was defeated in the Senate.

Republicans objected not only to its one-size-fits-all mandates on registration, early voting and mail ballots, but to its central premise: an unprecedented federal takeover of elections.

One of the bill’s biggest cheerleaders was Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who’s supposed to defend Colorado’s election system.

“(I)t’s so urgent that we do everything we can to fortify democracy, the right to vote and the future of the nation right now,” Griswold declared — as if undercutting Colorado’s model with Washington mandates somehow strengthened democracy.

Now comes President Trump with the same impulse. Last week he vowed to “get rid of” mail-in ballots via executive order, claiming it would “help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections.” He even claimed the U.S. is “now the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting.”

That isn’t true. Canada, Germany and South Korea are among a dozen countries that permit universal vote-by-mail. Another 22 allow some form of mail voting.

Colorado has run universal mail elections since 2013. By then, 70% of voters were already signed up for automatic, no-excuse absentee ballots. Today, two-thirds vote by drop boxes, not postal mail.

Trump went further: “(W)hile we’re at it, (get rid of) Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES…” he said, touting “Watermark Paper” as being faster, significantly cheaper and leaving “NO DOUBT” on election night.

Come again? Electronic voting — ballots cast directly on machines — is exceedingly rare. Colorado doesn’t use it. Every voter here gets a paper ballot, which is tabulated using computers and subject to human review. By law, those paper ballots are stored for 25 months and can be recounted by hand. Machines don’t change paper ballots.

Hand-counting hasn’t been the norm since the late-1800s. Today, fewer than 0.2% of voters live in the tiny jurisdictions that still do it. San Juan County is the only Colorado county that hand counts. And where hand-counts have been tried, they’re slower, require more manpower and cost far more than tabulators.

In another post, Trump even pointed to Tina Peters — a case that shows how terribly he’s being advised.

The former Mesa County clerk is serving nine years for a 2021 election-system breach, convicted on four felonies and three misdemeanors by a jury in one of Colorado’s most pro-Trump counties.

Yet Trump demanded Colorado “FREE TINA PETERS,” calling her an “innocent patriot” who “did nothing wrong, except catching the Democrats cheat.” He even threatened “harsh measures” if she isn’t released. Nothing wrong? Peters ordered surveillance cameras shut off, lied to obtain credentials for a county IT contractor, and handed them off to pro-surfer-turned-hacker Conan Hayes. Hayes used them to enter a secure room and copy sensitive election that later leaked online.

Her subsequent claims about voting machines — alleging flipped votes and illegally deleted files — were debunked, including by the Republican DA who prosecuted her.

In a statement, DA Dan Rubenstein noted Trump “overwhelmingly received the most votes” in Mesa and said Peters was indicted and unanimously convicted by a jury of her peers. “It is a gross mischaracterization,” he said, “to claim Ms. Peters did nothing wrong.”

Trump’s defense of Peters doesn’t prove fraud; it spins her case to justify federalizing elections.

And here’s the kicker: Pew Research found that, between 2020 and 2024, Trump’s mail-in margin rose 9 points while is in-person margin dropped 5. He won because of mail-in ballots.

From federalizing elections to Tina Peters, who’s giving Trump such terrible advice?

“Remember, the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes,” Trump insisted. “They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.”

Except that’s untrue. States aren’t federal “agents,” and the president has no authority to dictate how elections are run.

Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution expressly gives state legislatures control over the “Times, Places and Manner” of congressional elections. Congress may set broad rules and even override the states over those elections, but states retain full authority over state and local races as well as presidential electors.

“We don’t have national elections in this country,” said former Republican Arapahoe County Clerk Matt Crane, now executive director of the Colorado County Clerk’s Association. “The founders designed our system on purpose, rooted in federalism, where states run their own elections to choose their senators, representatives and presidential electors.”

Colorado’s experience proves why the states need flexibility as the laboratories of democracy. Since we switched to universal vote-by-mail, lawmakers have cracked down on ballot harvesting, mandated post-election audits and implemented signature verification audits. More improvements are needed — but if Washington takes over, those fixes could vanish.

Worse still, Congress would tie Colorado’s hands and leave us hostage to D.C. gridlock. Scrapping mail ballots by presidential fiat would upend a system Colorado voters have trusted for more than a decade.

Trump can’t rewrite state election rules with the stroke of his pen. And once Republicans invite Washington to run elections, Democrats will be all too eager to ram through their own version. Whether backed by Trump or Griswold, federalizing elections is a recipe for disaster.

Jimmy Sengenberger is an investigative journalist, public speaker, and longtime local talk-radio host. Reach Jimmy online at Jimmysengenberger.com or on X (formerly Twitter) @SengCenter.