The spin is on in the lawsuit settlement to clean up voter rolls brought by a conservative watchdog group against Colorado’s chief election officer, Secretary of State Jena Griswold.
Depending on who you believe, Griswold insists she won by settling the lawsuit against her because she continued to insist no federal laws were actually broken in cleaning up voter rolls … which she did right after the lawsuit was filed.
“We have a very rigorous list maintenance process and I do not believe that this litigation is about anything based in fact,” Griswold said.
And yet according to Judicial Watch, which filed the lawsuit against Colorado:
As part of its settlement Colorado will report to Judicial Watch on its yearly progress in cleaning up its rolls for the next six years. Since Judicial Watch filed its lawsuit, Colorado voter roll removals increased by 78%, from 172,379 to 306,303 per reporting period.
The number of outdated registrations removed by Colorado under a key NVRA provision increased after Judicial Watch filed suit, from 172,379 registrations for the reporting period ending in 2018 to 306,303 registrations for the period ending in 2022—an increase of 78%.
To clarify, it appears Jena did nothing wrong after the suit was filed and she hustled to clean up the voter rolls and then claimed she meant to do that anyway.
Colorado Public Radio did their best to cover for her:
Colorado has become a lightning rod for election skeptics in recent years due to its automatic registration system and reliance on mostly mail-in ballots. The state has one of the highest voter participation rates in the country and has won national praise from election experts for its security practices.
Sec. Griswold has been a frequent target of election critics, including after Colorado accidentally mailed postcards to roughly 30,000 non-citizens living in the state last fall notifying them on how they could register to vote. The postcards didn’t result in any non-citizens voting.
And how do we know that none of those 30,000 non-citizens were allowed to vote?
Because Griswold’s office sent out yet another 30,000 postcards telling them they weren’t allowed to vote.
So that’s it in a nutshell.
A lawsuit was filed against Colorado for not cleaning up voter rolls.
Colorado cleaned up its voter rolls and then claimed they didn’t’ do anything wrong in order to settle the lawsuit.