A group of Republican candidates who sought a recount after losing their primary races went to Denver court on Tuesday to stop the recount and compel the Secretary of State’s Office to conduct it instead, alleging the recount “has not been conducted in a fair, impartial and uniform manner.”

Specifically, the group, who included Tina Peters, accused El Paso County of using “improperly tested and unreliable electronic voting systems.”

“The candidates reasonably believe that the administration of the recount has not been conducted in a fair, impartial and uniform manner,” they said in the suit that named El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Chuck Broerman and Secretary of State Jena Griswold as defendants. 

The group said Broerman should give Griswold’s office access to the election records and let the latter conduct the recount.

In a separate action, some of the group’s members who failed to produce the cash for the recount asked the district court in El Paso County to allow them to pay an “adjusted amount,” alleging the estimated cost of the recounts included “unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious” charges.

In the lawsuit filed in Denver, Peters and others argued that a canvass board failed to follow statutory requirements to compare, during an accuracy test, the manual count of ballots with the machine count. Specifically, the plaintiffs said election officials were supposed to “compare the manual count of those ballots with the results of machine count that was tabulated by each of the chosen voting devices in the primary election.”

That didn’t happen, they alleged.

They also alleged election officials used “improperly tested and unreliable electronic voting systems,” making the recount “unfair, partial and not in a uniform manner.”

As evidence, the candidates cited the work of a “computer science expert,” who “identified catastrophic failures in the Dominion electronic voting systems used in 16 states, including Colorado.”

The candidates reiterated their request that the recount be conducted manually.   

Joining Peters in the Denver case are El Paso County coroner candidate Dr. Rae Ann Weber, county clerk and recorder candidate Peter Lupia, sheriff candidate Todd Watkins, county commission candidates Lindsay Moore and David Winney, House District 18 candidate Summer Groubert and Senate District 9 candidate Lynda Zamora Wilson. 

Of the group, only Peters, Weber, Lupia and Zamora Wilson provided sufficient funds to move forward with their recounts by the July 28 deadline.

In an interview Wednesday, Broerman said the lawsuit filed in Denver was “categorically false in every way imaginable.” 

The Secretary of State’s Office sets the criteria for the tests completed on the ballot tabulating machines ahead of an election and recounts, Broerman said.

“And we follow that (criteria) to the letter. It’s unfortunate that the plaintiffs and their attorney don’t fully understand election law,” he said. 

The Secretary of State’s Office also said the Denver lawsuit was “without merit.”

“The recount has been conducted under Colorado election law and rule. The Secretary of State’s Office looks forward to proving once again in court that Colorado elections are safe and secure,” the office said. 

The candidates – minus Peters – asked in a separate lawsuit filed in a district court in El Paso County to order Griswold and Broerman to remove the costs for vendor programming and support and allow the candidates who failed to shell out the full amount to pay the adjusted, presumably lower cost of the recount.

Broerman said last week the total cost to conduct the two recounts for the county clerk and recorder and coroner’s races was about $20,800. 

The candidates accused Broerman and Griswold of including “exorbitant” additional costs for vendor programming and support, calculated at a rate of $250 per hour for an estimated 40 hours, for a total amount of $10,000.

“As such, these additional costs practically doubled the estimated costs of approximately $10,819 for election judges, staff overtime and other costs,” the lawsuit said. “The involvement of a vendor is unnecessary and the additional expense is cost prohibitive.”

Peters, who was also granted a recount but was not named as a petitioner in the El Paso County district court lawsuit, submitted $255,912.33 for the statewide recount of her 14.2-percentage-point loss to former Jefferson County Clerk and Recorder Pam Anderson for the GOP nomination for secretary of state, Colorado Politics reported.

Wilson submitted $20,819.87 for a recount of the GOP primary bid for the Senate District 9 seat to Sen. Paul Lundeen of Monument.

In an email, Broerman called the lawsuit filed in El Paso County “groundless.” 

“We have provided a good-faith cost estimate to the candidates and are conducting this recount according to Colorado law. Any assertion to the contrary is not accurate,” he said in a statement. “The estimated cost of the requested recount is customary and should not be a burden to the taxpayers, especially when these races did not meet, by a very large margin, the threshold set in Colorado law to trigger a mandatory recount.”

Since the final results for all races did not meet the threshold set by Colorado law to trigger an automatic recount, that cost is paid by the candidates who requested them, not by taxpayers. State election rules require races within a margin less than or equal to 0.5% of the winner’s vote receive mandatory recounts, paid for by the state.

Editor’s note: This article has been corrected to reflect that the $250 per-hour rate was charged for an estimated 40 hours. It has also been updated to include additional comments from El Paso County Clerk Chuck Broerman and the Secretary of State’s Office.