KOMOR CAMPAIGN CALLS FOR FACT-BASED ELECTION SECURITY, WARNS AGAINST DISTRACTION FROM CLIMATE CRISIS

Grand Junction, CO — As a candidate directly participating in the American electoral process, I believe it is essential to assess the veracity of claims that our election system has been compromised. The American people — and especially the people of Colorado — deserve elections that are secure, honest, and fair, and they deserve leaders who distinguish real vulnerabilities from political theater.

On the administration's claims. In a primetime address this week, the President asserted that "declassified" intelligence proves foreign compromise of U.S. elections. The specific passages the administration offers to underpin these claims are, verbatim, the following from the White House "Election Integrity" page:

• "We judge that U.S. adversaries, including at a minimum Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, as well as non-state groups, have the capability to compromise U.S. election infrastructure."

• "We assess that centralized election-related data repositories, such as voter registration databases, pollbooks, and official election websites, are most vulnerable to exploitation, and adversaries could use access to these systems to disrupt election processes."

• "Over a period of years starting during the 2020 election cycle, the People's Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history — resulting in China's illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files."

• "Today, we are releasing documents that show the CIA obtained reporting of a specific plot by the Maduro regime in Venezuela to do exactly that — conspiring to digitally rig their own country's elections in 2020."

These passages speak to capability and vulnerability — not to any demonstrated alteration of an American vote, ballot, or tabulation. Notably, the intelligence community's own 2021 assessment found no foreign actor altered "any technical aspect" of the 2020 election, and the released material does not contradict that finding.

On "declassification." These intelligence reports were not newly "declassified" in any meaningful sense — the underlying material was already available. The collection of publicly purchasable U.S. voter registration data by foreign actors, including China, was documented in the 2021 National Intelligence Council assessment and has been publicly reported for years. Voter files are commercial data routinely used by political consultants; they cannot be used to alter votes. Recasting long-known information as a sensational new disclosure does a disservice to voters of every party.

On the logic of the threat. We question the logic of assertions that foreign governments would exert influence in one election but not in others, when by every reasonable measure their capabilities — including the use of generative artificial intelligence for disinformation — are increasing, not decreasing. If the foreign-influence threat is real and growing, then the response must be sustained, nonpartisan, and continuous across every election cycle — not rolled out selectively and only when politically convenient.

Failure to safeguard the U.S. election process - At the time of the alleged breeches the person administrating the U.S. Intelligence services was Donald J. Trump. If the U.S. failed to protect elections in the time-range specified an investigation should be lunched into official present at that time. These failures are being amplified in real-time. While the current federal administration amplified warnings about foreign election threats — releasing intelligence on China's acquisition of 220 million voter files and infrastructure vulnerabilities — at the same time it has been dismantling the very agencies built to counter those threats in 5 major areas/agencies:

1. Dismantling CISA

1. CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) is the federal government's lead partner to states on election cybersecurity. Since the start of the second Trump term, nearly 1,000 CISA personnel — about one-third of the agency — had left or been removed by mid-2025, dropping staffing from ~3,400 to ~2,500.

• 17 CISA election-security employees placed on administrative leave in February 2025.

• Ended federal support for the EI-ISAC (Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center), which helped state and local election offices protect systems from cyber threats.

• Ended the cooperative arrangement with the MS-ISAC, which monitored threats and vulnerabilities for state and local governments.

• The FY2027 budget proposal zeroes out funding for CISA election security entirely, along with chemical security and cyber training (CBS News; GBlock/Warner letter)

• Result: State officials no longer expect the federal government to reliably share election-threat information during midterms, per internal National Association of Secretaries of State documents.

2. Dismantling foreign-influence and counter-disinformation units

• FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force disbanded on Feb. 5, 2025 — Attorney General Pam Bondi dissolved it her first day. It had tracked covert foreign influence targeting U.S. elections, including by Russia.

• ODNI restructured, cutting its workforce by more than 40%, which gutted the Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC) — the intelligence community's central hub for foreign election interference, which housed the Election Threats Executive.

• Marco Rubio shut down the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference office in April 2025 — the successor to the Global Engagement Center, which had countered Russian, Chinese, and Iranian information operations.

3. Redirecting DOJ's voting-rights enforcement

• Senior career attorneys in the DOJ Civil Rights Division Voting Section were reassigned, and DOJ withdrew from several voting-rights cases.

• The Voting Section was redirected away from protecting access and toward voter-roll maintenance and suspected fraud — a reversal of its traditional mission.

4. Removing the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) leadership

• The administration fired both Democratic commissioners and the remaining Republican commissioner resigned (around July 9, 2026), leaving the four-seat EAC — which certifies voting systems, accredits testing labs, distributes federal election grants, and maintains the national mail voter-registration form — with no active leadership.

5. Executive orders attempting to federalize election rules

• Executive Order 14248 (March 25, 2025) attempted to force states to impose documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration, to ignore mail ballots received shortly after Election Day even if cast on time, and to withhold federal funding from non-compliant states.

  • Pushback: A federal judge permanently blocked these key provisions on June 24, 2026, ruling the President lacks authority over elections the Constitution assigns to states and Congress. A coalition of 19 attorneys general won the case — Colorado was among them. A third federal judge separately struck down the proof-of-citizenship rule.state.mn+1

• Executive Order 14399, challenged on April 3, 2026 by 23 AGs, attempts to restrict voter eligibility and mail voting and require use of federally pre-authorized voter lists. That case had not yet been decided as of the latest reporting.

On priorities and humanity. With over 850 active wildfires burning across Canada and nearly four dozen large wildfires raging across 15 U.S. states — including Colorado — alongside severe flash flooding from Missouri to Texas, all set against a backdrop of increasing poverty and economic stress among American families, we question the logic and the humanity of any administrative action that does not further the immediate safety and welfare of the American people. That includes the rapid resolution of climate change, which underlies much of our national distress — from fire and flood to heat-driven mortality and the displacement of communities. An administration that mobilizes the machinery of national security around election narratives while the nation burns and floods has its priorities inverted.

On our constitutional system. We support all legitimate, evidence-based efforts to ensure that the voting system established by the Constitution of the United States is carried out without fail in each and every election. State and local election officials are the proper administrators of our elections; the federal role is to support, not to supplant, them.

Recommended updates to the U.S. voting system. Our campaign recommends the following practical, nonpartisan measures to strengthen fairness, security, and honesty:

1. Paper ballots and risk-limiting audits — Require a voter-verified paper record for every vote cast and mandate risk-limiting audits for every federal election, the single strongest defense against undetected manipulation.

2. Modernize aging equipment — Replace end-of-life voting machines, adopt EAC VVSG 2.0-certified systems, and eliminate unnecessary internet connectivity for voting and tabulation systems.

3. Harden voter-registration databases — Apply mandatory cybersecurity baselines to the centralized databases that CISA itself identifies as "most vulnerable to exploitation," while strictly protecting voters' personal information.

4. Restore the federal-state security partnership — Rebuild CISA's voluntary cybersecurity support, threat sharing, and victim-notification programs for state and local election officials, which have been withdrawn this cycle for the first time since 2016.

5. Evidence-based mail-voting standards — Establish clear, uniform rules for mail-ballot processing and verification, rejecting restrictions built on unproven fraud claims.

6. Transparent, auditable list maintenance — Require notice-and-cure protections so that no eligible voter is wrongly removed from the rolls, and ensure any voter-data sharing with federal agencies meets strong data-security standards.

7. Limit intelligence-agency overreach — Keep the Election Assistance Commission and state and local officials as the primary authorities over voting equipment; prohibit seizures of voting systems absent a demonstrated foreign nexus.

8. Counter AI-driven disinformation — Fund public education and rapid-response information channels to help voters identify foreign and AI-generated election disinformation.

9. Support underfunded jurisdictions — Provide dedicated federal resources to the thousands of local election offices whose varying budgets and cybersecurity maturity are a structural weakness.

10. Protect the constitutional framework — Affirm that elections are administered by the states, with federal support — not federal takeover — and that no executive order may override lawful state election administration.

Election security and climate response are not opposing priorities — they are the same obligation of government to protect its people. Colorado deserves a governor who will pursue both with honesty and urgency.