Colorado Secretary Of State Loses Another Election Integrity Battle

Jena Griswold, Colorado’s rabidly leftist Secretary of State who will forever be known for her anti-democratic drive to knock former President Donald Trump off the ballot, has suffered another election law loss in federal court. 

The U.S. District Court for the Colorado District last week issued an order demanding the Democrat secretary of state release Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) reports suspected of containing dead registrants on the state’s voter rolls. The reports, according to a settlement, include individuals who may have died within the past three years. 

It’s another significant election integrity victory for the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), and another stunning loss for election transparency-stifling Griswold and ERIC. 

“PILF has knocked down ERIC’s wall of secrecy in the voter list maintenance process,” J. Christian Adams, president of the election integrity watchdog organization, said in a press release. “States cannot use third parties to hide election records that the public has a right to see.”

Griswold ultimately signed the stipulation after the court denied her original request to dismiss the case. Judge Philip Brimmer ordered the secretary of state’s office to disclose the requested 2021 ERIC Reports by Nov. 1. Brimmer did allow minimal redactions to the ERIC Report Key. With the agreement reached, the judge dismissed PILF’s claim that Griswold violated the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993. 

Lifting ERIC’s Veil of Secrecy 

Among the many reasons states have left the voter registration data sharing partnership in droves is that ERIC’s membership agreement bars states from sharing some records with the public. PILF argues such a veil of secrecy violates the NVRA, which protects the public’s right to see voter rolls and voter list maintenance records. 

The act provides that each “State shall maintain for at least 2 years and shall make available for public inspection … all records concerning the implementation of programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters.” Exceptions include confidentiality of individuals who decline to register to vote and “the identity of a voter registration agency through which any particular voter is registered.” 

Thanks to PILF’s lawsuits, ERIC, founded by left-wing election law advocate David Becker, has altered its secrecy demands. 

Brimmer’s order marks the third time a court has demanded ERIC disclose the records. PILF has won similar legal battles in Alaska and the District of Columbia, with each victory nullifying ERIC’s secrecy agreement with member states that made them immune to public scrutiny. The Alaska case opened the door to the subsequent orders demanding ERIC follow the law and release its data reports to the public. 

“States that are members of ERIC should take note of these three victories and disclose their ERIC data reports,” Adams said.

PILF has a similar case pending in federal court in Louisiana. That case has been ongoing since 2022. 

‘The Real Threat’ 

Griswold has compiled a troubling record as Colorado’s secretary of state since first being elected in 2018. In 2022, Griswold’s office “mistakenly” mailed postcards to some 30,000 foreign nationals encouraging them to vote. She blamed a glitch in the database tied to Colorado’s driver’s license list. The incident understandably raised red flags among election integrity activists about the potential for noncitizens to vote in U.S. elections, a concern that has only escalated in the 2024 election cycle. 

As the Republican National Lawyers Association noted at the time of Griswold’s admission, a similar issue dogged Pennsylvania Secretary of State Pedro Cortes, a fellow Democrat who resigned in the wake of a “glitch” that “may have allowed thousands of ineligible immigrants statewide to vote.” Griswold, on the other hand, was rewarded with an easy re-election victory not long after her election integrity fiasco. 

She delighted her fellow leftists last year when she argued in favor of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit that sought to remove Trump from Colorado’s presidential ballot. The left-led Colorado Supreme Court agreed with the Democrat lawfare argument that Trump somehow disqualified himself to run for president because he is accused by his political enemies of trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The U.S. Supreme Court sternly disagreed, ruling 9-0 that states lack the constitutional authority to remove Trump from the primary ballot.  

The ruling was an embarrassing repudiation of the Democrat Party, Trump-hating media outlets, and legal “experts” that bought into the false argument that the states had power to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Only Congress has enforcement authority over the section, written following the Civil War, that disqualifies officeholders and candidates that have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the United States from running for office. 

As the high court noted, the campaign to boot Trump from the ballot in Colorado and elsewhere would have opened the door to retaliatory efforts by red states. 

“An evolving electoral map could dramatically change the behavior of voters, parties, and States across the county, in different ways and at different times,” the court held. “Nothing in the Constitution requires that we endure such chaos — arriving at any time or different times, up to and perhaps beyond the Inauguration,” the ruling states. 

While she has attempted to distance herself from the case, Griswold vigorously argued for Trump’s removal from the ballot before the U.S Supreme Court.

“Just as Colorado cannot be forced to place on its presidential primary ballot a naturalized citizen, a minor, or someone twice elected to the presidency, it also should not be forced to include a candidate found by its courts to have violated his oath to support the Constitution by engaging in insurrection,” Griswold wrote in a brief.

The Democrats’ drive to disenfranchise millions of voters also served as a reminder of just who truly is imperiling democracy. 

“They talk about Trump being a threat to democracy, but you never saw him trying to force his opponents off ballots,” Lauren Bis, PILF’s communications director, told The Federalist. “He’s not the threat. People taking unprecedented actions to have people removed from the ballot so voters can’t vote for their candidate of choice, that’s the real threat.” 

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.