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By Ashe in America | Commentary, Ashe in America<\/a><\/p>\n The CCCA is a Non-Governmental Organization that Generally Serves as the Authority on Colorado Elections <\/p>\n El Paso County Clerk & Recorder Steve Schleiker has quietly resigned as Vice President of the Colorado County Clerks Association (CCCA), and he has withdrawn El Paso County from active membership in the non-governmental organization.<\/p>\n Schleiker was candid about his decision in an email with a Colorado voter who reached out after noticing his name had been removed from the CCCA leadership list.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter careful consideration, I made the decision several weeks ago to resign as Vice President of the Colorado County Clerks Association and to withdraw El Paso County from active membership. This was not a decision I made lightly,\u201d\u00a0the Schleiker said in the email. The clerk said he believes\u00a0\u201cit is important to be candid when asked directly.\u201d<\/p>\n His stated reasons for leaving are explosive.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the core, my decision was driven by concerns about independence, transparency, and the role of external influence within what is intended to be an independent association. As an elected officer of the CCCA, I was not permitted to participate in certain executive-level meetings with the Secretary of State\u2019s Office. I was informed this was due to a lack of trust from that office, and that participation would be delayed until others were more \u2018comfortable.\u2019 After receiving that information, I reached out directly to the Secretary of State as well as multiple members of her staff.\u00a0Each of them shared with me that these conversations had not occurred.\u00a0That response raised additional concerns for me and\u00a0led me to believe this situation was developed internally by the CCCA President and Executive Director.\u201d<\/p>\n The CCCA is run by Matt Crane, a former Arapahoe County clerk who has been the subject of\u00a0much controversy<\/a>\u00a0since 2020. Crane is the mastermind of the recent CCCA statements\u00a0demanding<\/a>\u00a0Tina Peters remain in prison. He is also the main point of escalation for the clerks on all things election-related.<\/p>\n In my opinion, Crane is a lobbyist that is invested (and literally vested through marriage) in the elections industry. With that in mind, it\u2019s always blown me away that he is Colorado elected officials\u2019 first call to \u201chandle\u201d election-related issues.<\/p>\n In the email, Schleiker is ostensibly saying that he believes Crane lied to him about why he was excluded from certain meetings. Yikes.<\/p>\n Of course, the public-private partnerships in elections ensure plausible deniability.<\/p>\n Consider that the Colorado Attorney General called Matt Crane to craft the official narrative debunking the findings of Tina Peters\u2019 Mesa Reports back during the investigation into Peters\u2019 2021 actions. That audio was\u00a0released by<\/a>\u00a0Joe Oltmann in February 2025, ostensibly proving that the investigation into Peter\u2019s was a sham. That is, the investigator called and explicitly asked an elections industry lobbyist how to debunk the findings in the Mesa reports \u2013 and, in the audio, you can hear him typing it all down.<\/p>\n That\u2019s how the official narrative \u201cdebunking\u201d the reports came to be:<\/p>\n Matt Crane.<\/p>\n The same guy allegedly lying to the VP of the CCCA about meetings with SecState.<\/p>\n Schleiker continues:<\/p>\n \u201cHistorically, there have been differences between us, particularly regarding some of my public comments about our election system. I have not always aligned with what I would describe as a more uniform or \u2018scripted\u2019 message, including phrases such as referring to Colorado\u2019s system as the \u2018Gold Standard.\u2019 I believe it is important to speak candidly and transparently, even when that perspective differs. More broadly,\u00a0I have concerns about whether the Association is consistently operating in a truly non-partisan manner.\u00a0While we are told that it is, my experience has led me to question whether that standard is being upheld in practice. I believe strongly that our work as clerks should be grounded in professionalism, service, and the rule of law, not political alignment.\u201d<\/p>\n