‘Coloradans deserve to know who is trying to influence their vote and how they are trying to do it…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) After talking up the importance of transparency in her public statements, Colorado‘s secretary of state is now being sued for attempting to skirt the state’s open record’s laws regarding a recent push to ban the Electoral College.
In March, the once battleground Colorado, newly radicalized, joined other blue states in passing legislation that would support the “national popular vote” movement.
In theory, should the number of states in accord pass the 270 mark needed to win the majority of electoral votes, the states would all agree to support the winner of the nationwide popular vote rather than their statewide winner.
Critics have noted that the discrepancies in rules between various states over matters such as ballot harvesting and how elections are administered would almost certainly result in court challenges and disfranchisement.
The more cynical have observed that it appears to be a clear ploy by sour-grapes left-wingers to re-write the rules since they cannot be elected through the constitutionally established means.
While Colorado’s General Assembly was considering the NPV bill—which it ultimately passed and was signed by Gov. Jared Polis—newly elected liberal Secretary of State Jena Griswold testified before the state legislature in favor of it.
That testimony prompted the Washington Free Beacon to request the communications between Griswold and other state officials with organizers of the national movement under the state’s open records act, known as CORA.
Griswold’s office only released the records selectively, however, and upon prompting acknowledged through a legal analyst that it had retained some of them, citing “work product” protections, which would apply to materials prepared in anticipation of litigation.
On Thursday, Judicial Watch announced that Griswold’s office would, indeed, be getting the litigation it sought, in the form of an open-records lawsuit.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said the Left had good reason for wanting to suppress the behind-the-scenes mechanisms and motives of its play at the national electoral system.
“Leftists in Colorado and other states want to undo the Electoral College and the U.S. Constitution in the hopes of guaranteeing control of the presidency,” Fitton said.
“This attack on the Electoral College would give large left-leaning states and voter fraud an unconstitutionally outsized impact on the outcome of our presidential elections,” he said.
Ironically, the Free Beacon reported that, prior to her own office coming under fire, Griswold had given considerable lip service to the need for greater transparency in government and elections.
Citing testimony published on her own office’s website, the paper said Griswold had previously denounced “secret political spending,” declaring that “Coloradans deserve to know who is trying to influence their vote and how they are trying to do it.”
Ironically, she called for a consistent and unified set of election rules to be established—the opposite of what would result if the NPV compact were to take effect.
“There will be some Democrats and some Republicans who will say they have concerns about more transparency,” Griswold said.
“But I believe that the majority of us here can agree that transparency is good for democracy and we can do more,” she said. “Campaign finance reform is about making sure that everyone plays by the same set of rules; it’s about giving voters the facts.”