Federal lawsuit filed against Gessler + 6 county clerks

8 thoughts on “Federal lawsuit filed against Gessler + 6 county clerks”

1. Where is that Constitutional right to anonymous, untraceable ballots?

   I’m not joking. I can’t find such a right discussed anywhere in the Constitution. Am I missing something?

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   1. There is no right to such a thnk. It is merely a tradition in this country. That makes the court case a difficult one for the plaintiffs.

      Having said that, there needs to be some legislative (not rule-making!) intervention to make access to voted ballots consistent across the state. As it is now, it sounds liek different counties are operating under different rules.

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   2. It’s horrifying.

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   3. But in the Colorado Constitution, Article VII, Section 8, which begins:

      All elections by the people shall be by ballot, and in case paper ballots are required to be used, no ballots shall be marked in any way whereby the ballot can be identified as the ballot of the person casting it. The election officers shall be sworn or affirmed not to inquire or disclose how any elector shall have voted.

      The proponents of this suit like to point out the first sentence, but ignore the second.  The writers of the state constitution seem to recognize that from time to time, election workers might accidentally learn how some individual voted.  However, they are prohibited from trying to find out and if they should accidentally find out, the are prohibited from disclosing the information.

      But that’s a State requirement, and this suit was filed in Federal Court.  I have not seen the lawsuit, so I am unaware of the basis the plaintiffs think they have to file in Federal Court.  The only thing about ballot secrecy I was able to find in a quick (~1 hr) trip through the statutes is in HAVA, but that’s specific to military and overseas voters.

      Below that, in the 2002 Federal Election Commission Voting System Standards, there are plenty of references to ballot secrecy.

      Maybe those standards, and the acceptance of HAVA money to implement electronic voting systems, are the Federal ties on which the plaintiffs choose to hang their hats.

      Until I see the suit itself, I can’t say.
      

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      1. conducted by state and local governments conducted in accordance with pre-determined state law in federal elections – this is something of the same theory of Bush v. Gore.  Pre-existing state law would include the state constitution.

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   4. Early elections in Colorado post-statehood were still public elections.  Anonymous voting is a powerful modern political norm, and perhaps a reasonable expectation of privacy when one casts one’s ballot is violated by something that make’s one ballot traceable even if there would be not constitutional right had the expectation of privacy not been established in the first place, but a secret ballot per se is not a constitutional right.

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2. … who thinks Gessler is a partisan buffoon, I am incredibly frustrated by this lawsuit.  We are a small County, with a small budget, and we are now forced to spend general fund taxpayer dollars to fight this apparently frivolous lawsuit, when we could do something useful, you know, like maintain roads.

   Since there has never been a claim of voter fraud in this county; hopefully the fed court will require this Aspen Activist to pay attorneys fees to the County if it turns out that it was baseless.

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3. That’s a very diverse set of counties, election procedure wise, at least as I recall.

   What is common between these counties that would lead to divulging voter information, and what has the SoS’s office failed to enforce exactly?

   I can’t come up with the answer, and the link doesn’t either.

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