Democrat Jena Griswold is headed for a second term, handily defeating her Republican opponent, former Jeffco Clerk Pam Anderson, the unofficial election returns on Tuesday night show.

The Associated Press called the race in favor of the incumbent short after 10:30 p.m. on election night. Unofficial results show Griswold leading Anderson by some 10 percentage points as of Thursday. 

In a statement, Griswold declared victory and thanked voters for sending her back to Colorado’s top election office. 

“I will continue to push for policies that expand access to the ballot box and ensure that every voter – no matter where they live, what they look like, or their political affiliation – can make their voice heard in our great state,” she said. 

The Colorado Secretary of State’s race is normally one that garners little attention. 

The 2020 presidential election – and alleged felony tampering with election equipment by Mesa County’s clerk and recorder – changed all that, and put Colorado on the national map on the issue of election integrity.

Anderson won a three-way GOP primary against Mesa’s Tina Peters and Mike O’Donnell.

Despite repeated election-related errors and a record of high turnover among senior staff, Griswold is on course to win handily over Anderson on Tuesday night, based in part by a strong showing by Democrats at the top of the ticket.

Anderson faced an uphill fight, lacking the money for the race as well as dealing with opposition from election deniers from within her own party.

Fundraising clearly favored Griswold, who raised more than $4.3 million to about $320,000 for Anderson.

Both Anderson, a former Jeffco Clerk, and Griswold, vigorously defend the integrity of Colorado’s election system.

Anderson’s position emanates from decades of service as an election officer. A seasoned election veteran with 17 years in public service, she started out as city clerk in Wheat Ridge and spent eight years as Jeffco’s clerk and recorder, where she managed elections and other business for the state’s second largest county. After term limits ended her time as clerk and recorder, she became legislative co-chair and then, until late 2020, executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association. 

The past decade brought major changes to Colorado’s elections laws – vote by mail, risk-limiting audits, voting centers, tightened processes around petition gathering – and Anderson, who holds a master’s degree in public administration, has been a leading voice for many of these changes.

Anderson said she decided to run for secretary of state after seeing, at both the state and local level, a parade of people who seek elected offices but who are more interested in partisan politics than in actual service. She said that, during the primary campaign events attended by all Republican candidates, people weren’t getting the complete picture about how elections work.

If elected, Anderson said she plans to be a spokesperson for the credibility of Colorado’s elections, as well as ably manage the Secretary of State’s Office – minus the partisan rancor that she believes now permeates the office. 

Leadership is a challenge for the agency, Anderson added, noting that, under Griswold, the agency has gone through four deputy secretaries of state, multiple chiefs of staff, communications directors and legislative liaisons.

Griswold, meanwhile, said that, under term, “democracy not only survived, it thrived in the middle of the pandemic.”

To support her claim, she pointed to Colorado’s record as the second highest voter turnout in the nation and her “decisive” actions in Mesa County, in which she asked a judge to prohibit Tina Peters, the clerk and recorder, from overseeing elections.

Griswold, who is finishing her first term as secretary of state, was the first Democrat elected to that post in 60 years. Her experience includes practice in anti-corruption and business law. She also ran a small business, and served as director of then-Gov. John Hickenlooper’s Washington, D.C. office. 

A first-time candidate in 2018, Griswold, who holds a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, held no experience running either state or local elections.