Quentin Young
Posted April 9, 2026
After President Donald Trump signed an executive order last week that would allow the federal government to meddle with mail ballot systems across the country, many legal experts and election officials declared the document a legal nonstarter that would be blocked by the courts.
While that’s likely true, it misses the real danger of the order, which puts voting in Colorado at more risk than in most other states.
Colorado was one of the first states to adopt universal mail ballots — every voter in the state by default receives a ballot in the mail. Only seven other states and Washington, D.C., have universal mail ballots, making them particularly vulnerable to this attack.
Colorado voters have the option of voting in person, before and on Election Day. But they have repeatedly shown that they much prefer using mail ballots. That goes for Republicans as well as Democrats. In the last midterm election, in 2022, Coloradans voted by mail at a rate of more than 95%. In the 2024 presidential election, the rate was over 92%.
Trump and numerous Republican leaders, such as U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert of Windsor, want to get rid of mail ballots, because they falsely claim it inherently favors Democrats or is widely susceptible to fraud.
Last month, Trump signed an executive order that directs his administration to create a national list of voting-age American citizens that would be used in ways that remain unclear to compare against voter rolls in the states and restrict mail ballots from being sent to voters whose eligibility is questioned.
Phil Weiser, the Colorado attorney general, was one of many legal experts who responded to the executive order by saying it doesn’t pass legal muster. “The constitution is clear that the states determine the time, place, and manner of elections,” Weiser said in a statement.
Democratic groups almost immediately filed a lawsuit that challenged the executive order as unconstitutional.
But the executive order must be viewed not merely as an attempt to curb mail-in ballots but rather as a part of the real goal of Trumpist Republicans: to eliminate democracy, which also implicates Colorado more than most other states.
Last summer, as the administration began asking that states turn over sensitive voter information to the federal government, Trump’s Department of Justice sent the most sweeping request to Colorado, demanding the state turn over all records related to the 2024 election. (Colorado declined to submit sensitive voter data, and the Trump administration has sued the state over its refusal to comply.)
Colorado is one of 16 Democratic trifecta states, making it a natural target of the MAGA attempt to accumulate power by any means. Trump has already demonstrated a shocking willingness to attack the state over partisan interests, such as with his repeated attempts to free Tina Peters, an election-denying former Mesa County clerk who was sentenced to a nine-year prison term for her role in a security breach of her own election equipment.
As election law expert Rick Hasan observed last week, the actual purpose of the executive order is “election denialism theater.” “Trump’s executive order seems aimed to sow chaos in elections and depress turnout,” Hasan said.
It is not enough for leaders in Colorado merely to counter each new illegal federal attempt to suppress the vote. In addition to those necessary but discrete battles, they must prepare for an all-hands, comprehensive defense of the state’s democratic systems, with the understanding that Trumpist attempts to steal elections will be brazen, unpredictable and involve physical intimidation.
They must prepare for administration attempts to seize voting equipment, like it did in January in Fulton County, Georgia. They must prepare for the deployment of armed, terrorizing federal agents at polling places. They must prepare for a presidential declaration of a national emergency that would be a pretext for Trump to upend elections in favor of Republicans.
Some Colorado leaders are attuned to the dangers ahead. Matt Crane, executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, said local election officials are already making plans to respond to post office-related mail ballot interruptions.
“We no longer summarily dismiss any concern, whether it’s DEFCON 1 or DEFCON 5,” Crane said. “And so we go through and we consider what would happen if X, what would happen if Y, and try to plan for any eventuality that’s going to happen.”
He noted that the state Legislature is considering a bill that would increase the time before an election when officials must send mail ballots to voters.
But other Colorado officials, notably Gov. Jared Polis, seem reluctant to defend democracy with the urgency Trump’s threats demand.
Substack writer Christopher Armitage recently suggested how governors could protect residents from intimidation at the polls. He said they should sign an executive order that establishes a credentialing protocol for purported federal agents at every polling place, position state law enforcement officers with body cameras at polling places, and send the record they establish of voter intimidation to the attorney general for potential state prosecution.
Governors like Polis are not used to thinking about using state police to guard residents against the federal government. But the federal government’s authoritarian intent means it’s the least they can do.
Quentin Young is the editor of Colorado Newsline. This commentary is republished from Colorado Newsline under a Creative Commons license.
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