DENVER–The Republican National Committee on Friday filed suit in Denver District state court against Secretary of State Jena Griswold, challenging her office’s policy of allowing overseas voters who have never set foot in Colorado to cast ballots in state elections.
Filed just four days before Colorado’s primary election, the suit argues Griswold’s implementation of the state’s overseas voter law runs headlong into the Colorado Constitution’s residency requirement.
Griswold is also a candidate for Colorado attorney general in the June 30 Democrat primary.
“Residency is not inherited and cannot be established by proxy,” the complaint reads. “An individual who has never personally made Colorado his or her home has not ‘resided in this state’ within the meaning of Article VII of the Colorado Constitution.”
Griswold’s office claims that “if you are a United States citizen who has never lived in the United States, you can register to vote in Colorado if your parent, legal guardian, spouse, or domestic partner was a resident of Colorado before leaving the United States.”
The complaint argues that allowing residency for voting to pass by proxy through a parent or spouse is unconstitutional, regardless of what the legislature or the secretary of state says.
Joining the RNC in the suit are Douglas County Clerk and Recorder Sheri Davis and U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank, who represents the Colorado Springs area.
The plaintiffs argue the policy is a partisan issue as well as a legal problem, pulling no punches on this point: “it is well understood that the overseas civilian voting bloc, which is partly comprised of these illegal never-resident voters, overwhelmingly supports and votes for Democratic Party candidates.”
The numbers at stake aren’t trivial. Plaintiffs cite U.S. Election Assistance Commission numbers showing Colorado counted 32,072 overseas ballots in the 2020 election, of which “only 27.5%” were for uniformed service members.
The complaint, among other things, asks the court to declare the relevant statute–as well as Griswold’s interpretation– unconstitutional, remove ineligible voters from the state’s voter registration system, and block Griswold from accepting future registrations or ballots from never-resident voters.
This is not the first go-around under Griswold’s watch involving Colorado elections, which the term-limited Democrat regularly refers to as the “gold standard.” Griswold was hip-deep in a 2024 controversy involving leaked voting-system passwords. She also settled a lawsuit in 2023 involving the removal of ineligible voters from the states rolls, and in 2022, she oversaw the “accidental” mailing of roughly 30,000 notices to non-citizens on registering to vote.
