Judge tosses out voter intimidation lawsuit against Colorado election deniers

A view of the Alfred A. Arraj U.S. Courthouse in downtown Denver on May 30, 2023. (Quentin Young/Colorado Newsline)

A federal judge on Thursday tossed out a lawsuit against three Colorado election conspiracy theorists who’d been accused by a coalition of voting rights groups of violating civil rights laws by conducting “voter verification” canvassing in the summer of 2021.

Judge Charlotte Sweeney said that the plaintiffs had failed to present credible evidence of voter intimidation.

“The court finds that there is simply insufficient evidence to proceed any further in this matter,” Sweeney said.

Ashe Epp, Shawn Smith and Holly Kasun, through their work with the group U.S. Election Integrity Plan, were accused of voter intimidation in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Enforcement Act of 1871, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court of Colorado in 2022 by attorneys with the liberal nonprofit Free Speech For People, on behalf of the Colorado NAACP, the League of Women Voters of Colorado and Mi Familia Vota.

All three defendants, through their work with USEIP and other groups, are or were associates of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, one of the the nation’s most prominent election conspiracy theorists and a leading benefactor of election denial causes. Alongside other far-right activists and media figures, they’re part of a constellation of Colorado-based conspiracy theorists who amplified debunked claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election, which former President Donald Trump lost, in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Plaintiffs sought to tie USEIP’s activity to “our nation’s troubling history of voter intimidation and disenfranchisement.” Their witnesses included Chris Beall, Colorado’s deputy secretary of state, and Beth Hendrix, director of the League of Women Voters of Colorado, both of whom testified that the campaign raised concerns and relayed secondhand reports of voters feeling intimidated by canvassers.

But the plaintiffs produced only one witness, Yvette Roberts, who purported to have been personally intimidated by canvassers at her home. Roberts is a Grand Junction resident, and although USEIP organizers had a volunteer “captain” in Mesa County and communicated with likeminded activists there, the defendants maintain that the canvassing activity was a separate effort by a different group. Under cross-examination on Tuesday, Roberts acknowledged that she “didn’t know what organization it was.”

While Sweeney said that she found “no ill will” in Roberts’ testimony, she called it “wholly unhelpful to the plaintiffs.”

Sweeney said that both the plaintiffs and the defendants had sought to make the trial about “sideshows” like election conspiracy theories, the integrity of Colorado’s elections systems and the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“It seems that all parties want this case to be something that it is not about,” Sweeney said.

The post Judge tosses out voter intimidation lawsuit against Colorado election deniers appeared first on Colorado Newsline.