Trump said Tuesday that the laws played a central role in his decision to move Space Force headquarters from Colorado Springs to Huntsville, Alabama.
Why has Colorado has taken center stage in President Trump’s long running campaign against mail-in voting? The answer likely has something to do with an act of voter fraud committed by one of the president’s own supporters: Former county clerk Tina Peters.
The deep-blue state’s election laws have so exercised Trump that they played a central role in his decision to move Space Force headquarters from Colorado Springs to Huntsville, Alabama.
During a Tuesday press conference announcing the move, members of Trump’s cabinet and the Alabama legislative delegation touted the strategic rationale for moving the headquarters, but Trump himself emphasized that Colorado’s election laws were a “big factor” in his decision to deprive the Centennial State of thousands of jobs and billions in new economic activity.
“The problem I have with Colorado, one of the big problems, is they do mail-in voting,” the president said in the Oval Office on Tuesday. “They went to all mail-in voting, so they have automatically crooked elections.”
While Trump has long argued that Covid-era election law changes resulted in widespread fraud that cost him the 2020 election, the president wasn’t competitive in Colorado in 2020 or 2024. (He lost the state by more than one million votes to Kamala Harris in 2024 and by more than 500,000 votes to Joe Biden four years earlier.)
Colorado is one of eight states that automatically mails a ballot to every eligible voter — under a statute enacted in 2013, long before the pandemic began — and there have only been 20 documented instances of voter fraud in Colorado since 2005, according to a Heritage Foundation database.
Nevertheless, Colorado’s voting laws have become an issue of particular interest for Trump’s Justice Department.
In May, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division sent a letter to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, alleging noncompliance with the Voting Rights Act. In the letter, the Justice Department demanded all election related materials and documents from the last 22 months, covering the elections for president, vice president, presidential electors, and members of the House or Senate. The DOJ also requested confirmation that no materials were destroyed or tampered with. The letter, sent by Harmeet K. Dhillon, assistant attorney general for Civil Rights at the DOJ, gave Colorado 14 days to hand over all materials to the federal government.
One particular incident of voter fraud — committed by one of Trump’s supporters, seemingly on his behalf — may help explain his particular interest in Colorado’s election laws.
In 2024, Tina Peters, a former Mesa County clerk, was charged with nine felonies and five misdemeanors for her alleged role in a 2021 election security breach. The scheme involved Peters giving an unauthorized man access to county voting records in what she claims was an effort to expose rampant voter fraud that was being actively covered up by the Colorado Secretary of State’s office. (The man Peters gave access to is an associate of MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, a prominent Trump supporter who aided in his “Stop the Steal” campaign.)
Peters was ultimately found guilty on four felony counts and three misdemeanors and is now serving a nine-year prison sentence.
In a Truth Social post on August 21, Trump demanded that Colorado officials “free” Peters, who he has called a “Political Prisoner,” and threatened “harsh measures” if they refused to comply. Trump has also urged his DOJ to “take all necessary action to help secure the release of former Mesa county clerk Tina Peters.”
The DOJ announced in March that they would review Peters’s sentence to determine whether it was “oriented more toward inflicting political pain than toward pursuing actual justice.”
The DOJ Civil Rights Division did not respond to National Review‘s request for comment regarding the investigation by the time of publication.
Throughout this summer, the DOJ has continued to send requests of this nature to other states, but according to reports, the Colorado overhaul has been the largest and most sweeping request.
“Donald Trump continues to spread lies and misinformation about our elections and now he’s targeting Colorado directly,” Griswold told National Review, in light of Tuesday’s Space Force announcement. “Colorado elections are safe and secure, and the nation’s gold standard. I will continue to stand up to Trump and fight for our democracy so every voter can make their voice heard.”
Other Colorado officials, including the state’s congressional delegation, governor, and lieutenant governor were also outraged by the president’s decision to move the base.
“This is a deeply disappointing decision for our state and nation. This is the wrong decision, diminishing military readiness and national security and eroding the trust Americans have in our country and its leaders to do the right thing,” Colorado Governor James Polis said in a statement. “Coloradans and Americans should all be provided full transparency and the full details of this poor decision.”