James Wiley

Wiley was born in Colorado Springs and describes himself as a fifth-generation Colorado native.[1][2] He says he spent part of his youth in Kazakhstan, where he saw the fall of communism, before moving back to the family homestead at 15 and graduating from Pueblo County High School.[2] He earned a management and marketing degree and a master's degree in business administration at Colorado State University Pueblo, the latter in 2017.[2][3]

Wiley works as a political consultant.[1][3] He has been executive director of the Libertarian Party of Colorado, director of Project Thaler and Save Our Suffrage, and secretary of the Chainsaw Caucus.[1][2][3] He says he has filed or supported lawsuits over election systems, including against Dominion Voting Systems and Secretary of State Jena Griswold.[1][2]

Wiley was the Libertarian candidate for Colorado's 3rd Congressional District in 2024, finishing third with 2.7 percent of the vote behind Republican Jeff Hurd and Democrat Adam Frisch.[3] He then switched to the Republican Party and advanced unopposed from the June 30, 2026, Republican primary for Secretary of State.[1] His platform calls for decertifying electronic voting equipment, one-day in-person voting with voter ID and hand-counted paper ballots, and placing public records on a blockchain ledger; he also says he would release internal Secretary of State files related to the case of Tina Peters.[1][2]