Incumbent Mesa County Clerk Bobbie Gross is now facing a Republican challenger in the state’s June 30 primary election.
Abigail Silzell filed to run for Mesa County Clerk on April 4, 2026, according to the Secretary of State’s website.
Silzell is 30 years old and her full name is Elizabeth Abigail Silzell. The address she gave for her residence, 9734 Highway 65 in Mesa, appears to be registered to a person who is likely her mother. Abigail’s LinkedIn page says she is currently in sales and marketing for Copper Creek Builders. She started that job in May, 2025. Prior to that time, Silzell was a closing assistant for Land Title Guarantee Corporation for 2 years and 10 months — from March 2021 to December, 2023. Before that, she worked in catering sales in the Dallas-Ft. Worth, Texas area and before that she worked as a store clerk in Ft. Worth.
She doesn’t report any experience as a county clerk, or any work in the offices of a county clerk in any capacity.
Worrisome errors indicate lack of attention to detail
What you’re seeing in the above screenshots is how Ms. Silzwell registered her candidacy with the Colorado Secretary of State.
The forms say in several places that her candidate committee’s name is “Committee to Abby Silzell,” not what we would normally expect, “Committee to Elect Abby Silzell.” Silzell submitted the information on her candidacy, which apparently contains this error, to the state on 4/4/26 and so far it has not been corrected.
Silzell’s social media posts also contain spelling and grammatical errors, albeit minor ones. Here is one from her candidate Facebook page made on April 27:
Yes, these errors are relatively small, but people have a right to expect thoroughness, correctness and an eye for detail in their county clerk. These errors, taken together and so far uncorrected, indicate Silzell may not possess these qualities.
Troubling endorsement
There are no reports so far on the Secretary of State’s TRACER website so far showing who, if anyone, has donated funds in support of Silzell’s candidacy, but one of her supporters is Tom Keenan, who endorsed her in a post on Facebook:
This is important because Keenan is a local conservative political activist who has been an election denier since 2021. He is also former candidate for Mesa County School Board who doesn’t believe students should pursue higher education and who was unable to put together a coherent sentence in a candidate questionnaire for that position in 2017. Keenan is a regular attendee at local political meetings that have featured, supported and defended former Mesa County Clerk — and now convicted felon doing 9 years in prison — Tina Peters, like meetings held by the extremist right wing group Stand for the Constitution.
This is all information to consider in evaluating Abby Silzell’s appropriateness for the office of County Clerk.
When spelling errors alter the meaning of the message, they are critical. Otherwise they are spelling errors.
The term “election denier” is ambiguous and loaded with emotional prejudice. Calling a person an “election denier” implies that person believes an election did not take place. A better term for a person who believes “election procedures are flawed and are not being audited for accuracy” is they are “concerned about our current election procedures”.
Election Procedures: More than half the citizens in our country are concerned about our election procedures.
The Voter Registration List for Mesa County is maintained on a computer system in Denver controlled by the Colorado Secretary of State and has a little over 4 million entries. It was formerly controlled by political precinct leaders on a ledger. New precincts are created when the number of registered voters in a precinct exceeds 2,000.
Control of the voter registration list at the state level is mandated by federal law. It does not achieve any economy of scale. It enables massive statewide election fraud. Control of the voter registration list at the precinct level can still be automated because computers are so inexpensive now, but control at that level restricts any fraud to the precinct level and the person controlling the list knows personally 10% to 50% of the people registered.
Current election procedures enable a person to register to vote, receive a ballot package in the mail at an address they specify, no one observes the registered voter is the person actually filling in the ballot, and anonymously return the ballot to the election office. All of these actions can take place without any election official ever having seen the registered voter.
Chain of custody for the ballot is broken when it is transferred to the US Post Office and rigorously restored when the ballot is delivered by the Post Office or into a ballot drop box.
Cody Davis, a current County Commissioner states we pay over $1 million each year to process elections. Is that much money really required to process an election?
The candidates: Bobbie Gross is a good person. But she believes that following the current election laws and election rules of the Sec of State is a more significant concern than acting to improve the current election procedures, which are seriously flawed and unaudited. She is following the advice of the Colorado Director of Elections, Judd Choate, who advises clerks when they are confronted with challenges to election procedures, “Never acknowledge something is wrong. Respond by listing all the current procedures.” Choate justifies that strategy because it has been shown to reduce “voter skepticism”.
Abby Silzell is on the Republican primary ballot because she received 32% of the votes of the delegates elected in caucuses to attend the Republican County Assembly. No more than a handful of delegates that voted for her knew she was planning to run for Clerk before that Assembly. 32% knew we needed a different Clerk than Bobbie Gross to address the current flaws in our election procedures.
I have since gotten to know Abby Silzell well enough to determine she has the skills, the knowledge, and the courage to present and implement the changes we need to improve our election procedures and the ability to audit them.
Ed Arnos