By Vince Phillips
Healthy skepticism is not cynicism. It is what reasonable people do when officials claim their election system is the “gold standard” but refuse to allow the best available methods to either generate or independently verify the results.
After the CO Primary on June 28, 2022, cumulative vote charts compiled from the New York Times election-night feed reveal highly unusual patterns in Republican Primaries in Colorado. After the first three reporting updates, the vote totals for Secretary of State Candidates Pam Anderson, Tina Peters, and Mike O’Donnell moved in near-perfect lockstep.
The statistical correlation (known as R-squared) exceeded 0.99. In plain language, an R-squared of 0.99 means the three candidates’ vote accumulation was almost perfectly synchronized for hours, like three different runners crossing the finish line at almost exactly the same intervals, no matter when or where new batches of votes were added around Colorado. Such a high correlation is extremely unlikely in normal election data, especially for all three candidates, where votes normally come in from thousands of diverse precincts at different times and produce more jagged, independent patterns.
The same unusual pattern appeared in the U.S. Senate Republican primary that night between Joe O’Dea and Ron Hanks. These smooth, highly correlated lines raise the possibility that the vote data was under some form of algorithmic control, meaning batches were being processed or reported in a coordinated way that preserved exact ratios rather than reflecting the natural, random flow of votes from independent precincts.
Republican Secretary of State primary winner Pam Anderson was a longtime election insider and close personal friend of Chaffee County Clerk Lori Mitchell. The two produced educational YouTube videos together called “Electionsplaining.” In 2021, Lori Mitchell brought Pam Anderson in as a consultant to help with Chaffee County elections in the wake of the highly publicized “missing video” controversy from the 2020 election. This occurred before Pam Anderson launched her own campaign for Secretary of State.
Tina Peters was a well-known and respected figure among Colorado Republicans for her strong stance on election integrity. Mike O’Donnell was largely unknown to most voters and conducted very little visible campaigning, yet he captured 28.1 percent of the vote, nearly matching Peters’ 28.8 percent. Peters paid more than 250,000 dollars for a recount and specifically requested a full hand recount of the original voter-marked paper ballots. The request was denied. Colorado law requires recounts to be conducted “in the same manner as the original election,” meaning machine tabulation using the same systems and programming. The machine recount changed almost nothing.
If there was a systemic programming error or mis-mapping in the ballot definition files, only a hand recount of the actual paper ballots could have independently confirmed what the voters intended. That option was not allowed.
In any complex system, experts acknowledge that errors, both accidental and intentional, are inevitable. When officials respond to legitimate questions by pointing to “trust the process” while blocking paper ballot hand recounts, the strongest form of verification, skepticism is both reasonable and logical.
The near-perfect correlation in the vote accumulation data has never received a clear public explanation from the Secretary of State’s office. If there is a benign reason for these patterns, the public deserves to hear it.
Chaffee County voters deserve more than assurances. We deserve election systems that welcome independent verification rather than resist it. Transparency is not an attack on our elections. It is the foundation of acquiring trust in them.
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