Federal Judge Dismisses Colorado Voter Intimidation Lawsuit
A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit on Thursday accusing a right-wing group in Colorado of voter intimidation.
After a three-day trial, a district court judge found the pro-voting groups that brought the lawsuit didn’t provide sufficient evidence that the right-wing U.S. Election Integrity Plan (USEIP) intimidated voters when they canvassed voters in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
The lawsuit, which was filed on behalf of the Colorado Montana Wyoming State Area Conference of the NAACP, League of Women Voters of Colorado and Mi Familia Vota, accused USEIP of violating Section 11(b) of the federal Voting Rights Act (VRA) and the Ku Klux Klan Act for their post-election efforts in the early days of 2021.
According to the lawsuit, USEIP, at the direction of its founders Shawn Smith, Ashley Epp and Holly Kasun, organized an effort to send volunteers to canvas door-to-door in various Colorado communities to verify voter status. Some of the volunteers were allegedly armed and dressed to falsely give the impression they were government officials.
But during the trial, the plaintiffs only produced one witness who testified to being intimidated by canvassers at her home, according to Colorado Newsline. When pressed to identify the canvassers, the witness couldn’t say if they were linked to USEIP or another group.
Original post, July 12:
In the fall of 2021, Shawn Smith, Ashley Epp and Holly Kasun — co-founders of the right-wing group the U.S. Election Integrity Plan (USEIP) — directed their army of volunteers to canvass communities throughout Colorado.
The volunteers went door-to-door in majority Democratic and racially diverse areas and interrogated voters about their addresses, if they voted in the 2020 election and who they voted for. Some were armed, donned badges and claimed to be from “the county” as they falsely accused residents of casting fraudulent ballots in the 2020 election.
Their voter intimidation efforts, according to a lawsuit that begins a bench trial Monday in a Colorado district court, may have violated Section 11(b) of the federal Voting Rights Act (VRA) and the Ku Klux Klan Act. The lawsuit, which was filed in March of 2022 by the Colorado Montana Wyoming State Area Conference of the NAACP and the pro-voting groups the League of Women Voters of Colorado and Mi Familia Vota, outlines in detail how USEIP gained access to public voter lists in an attempt “to target and intimidate” those who voted in the 2020 election.
“USEIP’s actions not only intimidate voters who cast ballots in the November 2020 election, but also intimidate future eligible voters, dissuading both groups from exercising their constitutional right to vote,” the lawsuit reads. “USEIP is actively generating and spreading fear that voters can expect multiple armed and unarmed USEIP members to show up at their doors at any moment to harass and interrogate them about their voting history.”
The trial begins at the height of the 2024 election season, amid a heightened risk of extremist political violence, much like in 2022 and 2020. Disinformation and conspiracy theories about mass voter fraud, fueled by former President Donald Trump and his conservative allies, inspired a number of right-wing groups to engage in various forms of voter intimidation and harassment of election workers.
USEIP formed in the aftermath of the 2020 election and its members, according to the lawsuit, have ties to QAnon and participated in the insurrection attempt at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Smith, one of USEIP’s co-founders, was employed by MyPillow CEO and prominent election denier Mike Lindell, according to the lawsuit.
USEIP isn’t the only right-wing group that was sued for its voter intimidation tactics in the past two election cycles. In Arizona in the lead-up to the 2022 midterms, two lawsuits accused a group called Clean Elections USA of coordinating efforts to send armed vigilantes to monitor drop boxes, following and photographing voters dropping off their ballots. And in Georgia, litigation is ongoing in a lawsuit filed against the right-wing group True the Vote, who allegedly recruited “citizen watchdogs” to monitor drop boxes and offered a “$1 million reward to incentivize its supporters to find evidence of ‘illegal voting”’ in the 2020 election.