The El Paso County Clerk and Recorder’s Office has asked the 4th Judicial District Attorney’s Office to investigate petitions submitted on behalf of David Leinweber’s campaign for county commissioner for fraud.

Kate Singh, a spokeswoman for the DA, confirmed Thursday the office is investigating. 

Clerk and Recorder Steve Schleiker said his concerns have nothing to do with Leinweber, but rather “companies that come into town and take advantage of candidates,” he said. He noted there are similar problems in Denver and he wants to see the irresponsible behavior stopped. 

“There are things I am extremely concerned about. It has nothing to do with the candidate or campaign,” he said. 

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Leinweber is a Colorado Springs city councilman and small business owner running against three other candidates in the June Republican primary to represent the central and western portion of the county. 

He qualified for the ballot on April 1 after submitting 3,704 signatures. The clerk’s office rejected 2,477 signatures and accepted 1,227. Leinweber needed 1,000 signatures from registered Republicans in his district to qualify for the June primary ballot. The normal percentage of invalid signatures is between 30 and 35%, Schleiker said.

Signatures can be disqualified for various reasons. For example, a voter may think they live in the district when they do not, a voter may think they are a registered Republican when they are not, he said. 

Leinweber’s campaign manager Sarah Jack said the company contracted to collect signatures, OnTheBallot Consulting, told the campaign some of the signatures could be questionable about four days before petitions were due. 

So Leinweber and his family and friends stepped up their efforts to collect signatures themselves and in total collected 600, Jack said.

The campaign decided to turn in all the petitions because the staff had no way of knowing which signatures were questionable, she said. But they also were upfront about potential problems.

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“We notified the clerk and recorder and the DA that there was a potential for some of those signatures not being good,” she said. 

The Clerk and Recorder’s Office later told the Leinweber campaign they found potential for fraud, Jack said.

For Jack, a positive resolution would be accountability in this case. She also noted she had worked with OnTheBallot before and they are licensed with the Secretary of State’s Office.

The company also told the campaign: “The people they had hired stood by the signatures and they wanted to be paid,” she said. 

Those who collect signatures must sign an affidavit saying they witnessed the signatures and swearing to it in front of a notary, Jack said. 

Brett Moore, the registered agent for OnTheBallot Consulting, largely deferred to the campaign for comment. 

“We are happy the candidate is on the ballot,” he said. 

Paying for signatures to qualify for the ballot is expensive, but often necessary because a campaign may need to speak with 3,000 to 5,000 people to get 1,000 good signatures, Jack said.

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This year petitioning onto the ballot in County Commission District 3 was particularly competitive because three candidates collected signatures and voters can only sign for one person. In addition, the overall number of registered Republicans has fallen to 30% of all voters. 

At the same time, more El Paso County Republican candidates are collecting signatures this year, rather than going through the assembly process to qualify for the ballot. 

The trend follows strife over a variety of issues that split the local Republican party. 

“I have never been in a situation where there was so much competition for signatures because of the overall party situation,” said Jack, who has been involved in campaigns for decades.