Hour 1 with Heidi Ganahl - 12-30

Ladies and gentlemen in this corner from the University of Colorado. Thirty years in Lorraine, fighting for truth, justice and the American Way.

Dannchapleas, all right, guys, this is not Dan Caplas. This is Heidi Ganol filling in for Dan. It's great to be here this afternoon.

It's like Thursday. I hope, I hope you understand if I forget what day it is, what time it is, what meal I've eaten.

I mean, it's that crazy break period between Christmas and New Year's. But wow, what a great holiday it was. And the weather's been fantastic. It's kind of weird. I'm actually headed down to Florida next week for a little break, and.

I think it's going to be freezing down there.

It's supposed to be this big ice storm that hits all of America. I guess I don't know, at least the eastern now. But anyway, so happy to fill in for Dan, So grateful to be here. There is so much going on in the news, but I wanted to start with something kind of sad for Colorado. It was a rough, rough weekend when it comes to football in Colorado.

Jesse, did you watch any of the games.

Unfortunately, Yes, I was actually working the Buff game, so it was brutal. CSU didn't do fair much better, but yeah, the Colorado teams all the way around.

It was a struggle not to mention the Broncos. What the heck was that?

Yeah?

That was a cherry on top of a bad football weekend for sure.

I know we're all recovering. Yeah, the Buffs, saw man. I love my Buffs. I've done a diehard Buff fan since I was there in eighty six, and it's been quite a journey. But you know, I've got to give it to Dion. He's done an incredible job with the program. I'm really gonna miss seeing Travis and Chador play together. You never know where they're going to end up, but probably not on the same teams, but it's going to be so exciting to see them take off into the

You bet?

So where what's like your big college team? Jesse? I'm buffs. Oh you are Buffs?

Good?

Good, good, well for us.

Phew that that's a relief, and that's why I love hanging out with Dan.

He's a huge buff too, so he.

Yes, he is in primes. Got those boys pointed in the right direction for sure, So you got to remember that. I mean, they won one game last year, so.

That is insane, that's wild.

And people were pretty pessimistic coming into this year too, and I think they did a great job. The kids stayed really teed up even when they weren't winning or even when they were facing a rough game. So you know, I'm really proud of the program, proud of what he did. The last thing I did as a regent in at the University of Colorado, which was in January of twenty three, when I finished out my turn, was approved that contract for Dion, So I think that.

Was a great way to go out, Yes, you bet, but.

Onto other crazy things going on in world. I don't know how many of you are on Twitter what's now called X, but I perused X today just to see what the latest greatest stories were, and I tried not to be on too much over the break. In fact, I took a couple days off and when I came back the world had gone mad about HB one visas, and everyone was mad at Elon and then Vivek wade in and he was talking about how kids shouldn't do sleepovers, and it was just.

A lot of turmoil.

But what I liked about this was we were having feisty debate about a really important issue and how it plays into the promises that were made during the campaign. And I think it ended up okay. I think we're at a place where we can agree kind of what happens next. We need to reform the visa program. We need to stay firm in dealing with immigration, especially criminals who need to be booted out of the country, especially

Now, I grew up.

In the eighties, graduated high school eighty four, and it was just a thing that you had sleepovers, you hung out with your friends.

You would be gone most of the weekend.

You know, even as a younger kid kind of you know, as they kid around, we were traveling around the neighborhoods drinking out of water hoses. I mean, that's kind of funny. But I grew up a monument which is right down the road. It was a small town back then, And I'm not sure I agree with Vivek's take. He said, quote a culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math Olympia champ or the jock over the valedictorian will not produce the best engineers. He went on to recommend

And the world is very complicated.

It has a lot of issues, and it usually makes their issues seem a lot smaller. So that's what my TED talk was about. And really what occurred to me was kids need a sense of purpose, and once they have a sense of purpose, they can really kind of push aside some of their struggles and make a difference in the world and make a difference for themselves. So that's where I think Vivek's a little.

Off on that.

I think, yes, our education system needs to kick it into gear. We're going to talk about that in the five o'clock hour and have a school board member from Albert County, Heather Booth, on to talk about an issue there. But we also as parents, I think, need to give our kids room to grow, to heal from what happened with COVID and some of the things in the past

Do not?

You don't yet? Uh no, I hopefully I'm not deterring you.

No, no, no, no, I dodged that bullet.

What do you think about what's going on with kids today in society?

I think you're onto something when the guy have to have purpose, and there's so many distractions like that we didn't have to deal with when we were growing up.

You know where'd you grow up?

Southeast Denver?

Oh?

Did you what high school?

George Washington?

Nice? Nice?

Yep, Patriot.

That's good.

I mean things have changed a lot in Denver too, especially in the education system. I remember when Denver Public Schools was one of the top school districts in the whole country. Am I how the the mighty have fallen?

Not anymore?

No, it breaks my heart me too.

I don't have the latest stats, but when I was running for governor a couple of years ago, there was a stat that was really really horrible that only five percent of African American and Hispanic kids could read at grade level in Denver Public schools.

It's inexcusable.

No, and I imagine things haven't changed that much. I haven't seen anything that would change it that much. In fact, I've heard more and more parents moving out at DPS or finding other options, whether it's charter schools, private schools, homeschool. But boy, we've really got to get more focused on like success in education, not just making our kids feel good. Which I guess is a little counter to what I

A lack of.

But I, you know, I applaud Vivek and Elon for doing all the hard work they're doing. I doubt they're getting paid for taking the hits that they are. Every once in a while we're going to disagree with their approach. But I do think Doze is really important, and I think it's really important to, you know, have these tough discussions about the HB one versus about Doze, about the government, the size of the government, the whole shebang. So more to come after this break. It's Hidi Ganal filling in

Give us a call.

You can call the call in line at three O three seven one three eight two five five or text us. Just put the word Dan to start off, and then five seven seven three nine. I believe we have a caller, Jesse. Her name's Jessica. Hello, Jessica.

Hey, Hi, it's for us Mommy.

By the way, Oh hello jess How are you good?

Are you? I wanted to talk about this stuff because I was raised so strictly where I wasn't allowed to do it, And now I'm obviously I'm not a mom now, but I'm like, I wouldn't let my kids either. I would be so strict about it.

Well, just I think there's a couple aspects to that.

Like one is, when I first heard the article, I was like, oh, I didn't let my kids do actual sleepovers until they were older and could communicate to me really well. And I knew the families really well, but we would do like I can't remember what we called them,

The Tiger mom stuff. I can see that. But yeah, it's so funny because I grew up to like hating how strict my parents were. Nowadays, I'm like, oh my gosh, I wouldn't let my kids do anything either. No, everything's so different nowadays.

But it's tough.

It's tough, and you know, I have different approaches with my four different kids, right They're all different, especially with social media. It's so tough around social media. It's a constant battle to keep them off their screens. But yet here we are, you know, we have to live our lives on screens too, So it's a crazy balance right now for us. Mommy, I want you to tell us what happened today, if you know, with the open meetings hearing did you go to that?

I didn't go, but I was listening in and recording it. There was probably like twelve people who testified if they weren't voting on anything today, but there was some really good testimony on it, and you know, they just kind of said some stuff, but there was no vote to be done today.

What was your feel like?

And can you explain to the listeners or I can what that was about?

So they passed what was the bill number? Last legislative session, they passed the bill. I forget what number. It was basically, and I think Soper was in on it, but it was basically to make the open meetings like harder, making things harder for to be open and transparent, and so they had to this was this meeting was a part of that.

I don't know.

It's also convoluted, it is.

And they wanted to be that way, don't they. For those of you don't know, Jessica has a great Twitter handle Force Mommy. She is constantly calling out the government, local and state for all their shenanigans and just what do you think is the most egregious thing you've seen lately that really bothers you that the government's up to, well, the egg.

Thing, Yeah, Carrie Sonovan and the egg thing. And she's up at her ranch in the mountains, you know, probably has her own eggs and everything. And they pass that and I guess someone was looking at her blue Sky account because they all ran the blue sky, of course, and she was like basically saying, Oh, it wasn't our fault, blah blah blah, you know that kind of stuff. And just all the rules they make on businesses, all these people who've never run a bit businesses making all these

Yeah, I mean, that was one of the most difficult things about being an entrepreneur. I built a company called Camp bow Out. It was a big pet care franchise, and one of the things that got me involved in politics was how difficult it was to get through all the regulations and the red tape to even get one of the locations open.

And granted, we were trying to open doggy daycare.

Facilities in the middle of city areas, but we were respectful and understood that there were noise issues and like drainage problems, et cetera. And we were always trying to select properties that would work, but they just wanted to make it as difficult as possible. And we would create so many jobs with those businesses and bring a lot of joy to the dogs and the dog owners in the neighborhood, and we would have all of them testify and they would still turn it down over and over

Teach me how to push back.

And I learned how to advocate for my franchise ease and small business owners. And that was back in like I don't know two thousand and eight or nine when I first started getting engaged, but that's you have a similar path to getting involved in the local government. You ran for city council in Arvada. Tell us how you got engaged.

I was well, mainly during the COVID stuff when I started, and then I got onto Twitter and I was just so mad about everything that was happening. And I learned the local government and these unelected people were ruining all of our lives. So, you know, I started people like love to say they're political experts and stuff, and I'm like, no, you have to actually get involved and know what's going on. So it was kind of like that where I just had to get involved and how to start, you know,

No, I'm not either, And I think Freestate Colorado's doing a great job also of covering what's happening at the capitol.

You can follow.

Brandon on Twitter and also I think he has a YouTube channel. But thanks Jess, thanks for joining and keep up the great work.

Thanks.

No sleepovers for Jess's kids if she has any WHOA. Yeah, I tend to agree with her on what's happening in society, and we got to be very careful. But I also think there's a crazy balance we have to find as parents between giving our kids freedom to make a few bad decisions or you know, keep them locked in their room studying all the time. I don't know my kids would freak out if I tried to do that. Oh, Jesse.

I like watching it.

I'm a glutton for punishment. Face the Nation had on a gal who was talking about the bird flu and how everyone should get vaccinated.

Right now for this bird flu that's coming. Did you see that.

I did see the clip of it. Yeah, that's I forget the name doctor Wynn I think is her name. I'll pass on that.

I think all of America is going to take a pass on that. What are they thinking?

I mean, even if it's serious, like take a different approach.

Right, they're so tone deaf after everything that happened with COVID that to go out there and still push that is be beyond dumb to me.

Yeah, getting whacked in the election wasn't enough.

It's like, Okay, there was a red tsunami all across America telling you to stop this nonsense.

Let's dry some more, let's do some more. Take the hint people, I know, and I mean that.

That's a big conversation to the MAHA movement make America healthy again with RFK Junior, and I think there was even some little spats going on in that movement over the weekend. Everybody was feisty this weekend. I mean, our football team's lost, so we had a good reason to be.

But right, yeah, there's a lot of infighting going on in the x sphere at the moment between the MAGA people and vivic and it's getting it's getting nasty.

Well, you know, legislating is messy, and winning an election is one thing, and then figuring out how to actually change policy or lead a country in a different direction is is pretty different. But I think Trump made a statement today too with Speaker Johnson. He came out supporting Speaker Johnson, the current Speaker of the House, when there was a lot of questions about whether he should be the one. But we have such a slim majority, and

Day is does not apply? I believe today is Monday.

Oh it's Monday. That's why I had I was in denial. This is Hidi Ganall. I'm filling in for Dan Caplis. Obviously I have holiday brain. We're gonna talk a little bit now about election integrity, a very interesting issue one that's been you know, in the in the headlines. In Colorado, we had Jenna Griswold, her department as Secretary of State leaked some bios passwords and caused a lot of voters

She was the Mason County Clerk.

I have my friend Bob Cooper on to talk more about election integrity and what's happened over the last few months.

Hello, Bob, Hi, how are you doing.

I'm good, except it's Monday, not Thursday.

Did you know that?

No, you're kidding.

I know, I know, Bob.

No.

I was just going to say, you've been in the trenches on the election integrity front for a while. We've gotten to know each other over the last year or so, and you are involved with a group called Colorado Institute

What you found.

Sure, be happy to do that, just just as the backdrop that most Colorado citizens should understand, as we are in a mail in voting state, so not every state is like that, but what we do because we are a mail in voting state, is we mail out three point eight million ballots the US Postal Service and that's how votes are cast, the mail voting system. And there's

Bob.

Can I ask you a question, do you know how many undeliverable ballots there were returned to the post office like statewide?

Or can you give us an example in a county?

Yes, I can give a county in the data I have right now for twenty twenty two. Or if I did the first thought it and that number was curtly over one hundred and fifty thousand, I think it's left one hundred and sixty thousand.

So one hundred and sixty thousand or so ballots in the twenty two election were returned undeliverable. And I know that what you found in your research was there was a big gap in just the eleven counties that you looked at, specifically nine there were about thirty thousand ballots that were unaccounted for in those nine counties. Is that accurate?

Yes? Let me clarify this so that the people listening understand one of the major issues on a voting system is they are poorly audited. And when I I'll give this example. Normally in a business, on this type of a document, what you'd want to have is very good chain of custody, in other words, documents that showed in the county. Hey, the United States Postal Service delivered to my county on this date four thousand undeliverable ballots as

Wow.

So you know, and we are doing this again, doing an audit from the twenty twenty four election. Not from the standpoint point that we know something's really wrong. We're doing it because you can't determine if it's wrong or not if you don't have procedures like this to audit, to chain a custody.

Yeah, Bob, That's one thing that I became very aware of after doing a lot of research and going through this analysis of the Douglas County election in twenty two is there is really no outside auditors that come in and look at the processes and systems of our elections, all of its self governing. Like we saw that with the BIOS password, Like she even hired I think a law firm that was involved somehow in her race or I can't remember, but anyway, it was all like very incestuous.

I mean, we'd never do that in the business world. Is that accurate?

That's absolutely accurate, infective any message your listeners say out on this. The country should be all over this, citizens should be all over These voting systems are very poorly audited. In fact, we can absolutely illustrate to the public that they would not pass even federal GLO audit standards.

So, Bob, let me take a break real quick to ask you a question. So when we talk about auditing and bringing in someone from the outside to look at things, I want to talk about who makes those decisions. Because we have a lot of Republican county clerks across the state. We have the majority of county commissioners that are Republican, I think it's about sixty forty the split, and the county commissioners hire the county attorney that has a lot

That's absolutely correct. That was done in twenty twenty one when the you know, the angst over the twenty twenty election was really high, and they immediately panned outside audits. And the citizens should really be upset about this, and it is up. This has to be changed with the Secretary of State and that the legislature must get on this, and that will only occur via a couple of things. The first item would be a public needs to understand

It's not you're funny. Maybe Rocky Mountain Voice has covered it. I don't know about the others.

Yeah, And so we've tried to get this in front of even conservative streams and and it's not we're screaming election fraud. We're screaming the thing isn't properly audited.

You'd never know, right, That's not too much to ask, especially with what's at stake right now, with people's mistrust in the elections. I don't think there would be any harm in opening up the books, as they say, and letting some experts.

Obviously, in a.

Secure way evaluate these systems and processes. We saw the disconnect in the signature verification process in Mason County where three ballots got through that shouldn't have and those voters weren't allowed to have their vote count because of that.

That's a perfect illustration because it's parents I know in the entire state. I don't know of any audit that's been done on the accuracy of the signature verification system. There's no report you can find. So the entire process that is used to secure that the voter ID is linked to that that ballot, there is no reports on how accurate the process is that I know of. If someone knows, they ought to call in and let us know. But I know of no published report in the accuracy of that process.

Bob, if you're willing to stay after the break, we'd love to keep talking to you. If not, I'll keep the conversation going and folks can call in at three oh three seven one, three eight two five five or text Dan to five seven seven three nine and we'll engage there.

But this is really really important information.

It's not the most fun topic to discuss, but it's really critical to in storing ensuring trust in our elections again. So this is Hidi Ganall filling in for Dan Caples with my guest Bob Cooper.

Right now. We're going to talk more after the break. See you in a minute. Good afternoon.

It's Heidi Ganall filling in for Dan Caplis, and have my friend on Bob Cooper, who's kind of election integrity expert. He's done some incredible work over the last couple of years.

Bob.

We've talked about the US Post Office and how there's some serious issues around reporting undeliverable ballots and just ballots, tens of thousands of ballots floating around that no one can account for. We've also talked about signature verification and how there's really been no analysis of whether the system works or not. And I think Jenna Griswold even says, hey, if you're looking for the signal, if you're working in the election process and you see a signature in your

If anything went wrong.

So with all that being said, I think you're right, and we only have a couple minutes to wrap this up. But one of the most important things we can ask our county commissioners and our county clerks at our local levels is to bring in outside experts to do audits. The Secretary of State's going to say, no, she created that rule, but someone needs to have the kahunas to sue her and say absolutely, we're going to do this. And I bet half of Colorado at least would have their backs.

What do you think?

I think so, I think it's part of it is the citizens need to understand this needs to be done, and it's not a political issue. It's an issue of having a very good, secure voting system with proper audit standards. There are none, So you know, this citizen should make an issue of this because heney this can be fixed. This is not a case of you know, there are simple things that could improve it immensely. And having met with multiple election officials and county clerks, these are very

I think it's so important to restore trust in our voting systems, in our process, in our vote, and that's missing for a lot of America, for a lot of Colorado, especially with all the debacles that happened in this latest election, and when we came out and did that election integrity press conference a couple months before the election, it was shocking how even the Republican clerks got mad at me