Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold is being sued in federal court by a watchdog group for blocking the inspection of public voter list maintenance data as required by federal law.
J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department voting rights official and president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, said they are taking Griswold to court because the public has a right to these documents detailing the removal of deceased registrants from the voter rolls.
“Colorado is hiding voter list maintenance documents the public is legally entitled to,” Adams said in announcing the lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court in Colorado.
“Elections must be free and transparent for Americans to trust their results. Secretary Griswold and ERIC are blocking transparency and violating federal law,” Adams said.
ERIC is the acronym for the Electronic Registration Information Center, a group that sends data to Colorado and other states listing which voters should be removed from the voter rolls because they have moved or died.
The need for transparency is even more important because ERIC has a history of inaccuracy when it comes to identifying ineligible registrants, Adams said.
From the group’s press release announcing the lawsuit:
Even liberal groups have criticized ERIC. Barbara Arnwine, the former executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, reportedly stated, “ERIC should be called ERROR because it’s that erroneous and that full of flaws.”