Colorado
Judge throws out clerk’s recount challenge
DENVER (AP) — A judge on Tuesday threw out a lawsuit challenging a primary election recount lost by an indicted Colorado county clerk who alleged voting fraud in her failed bid to become the state’s top election official.
Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters filed a lawsuit objecting to the methods used to recount ballots on Aug. 3 but did not ask for the recount to be stopped until the following day, after the recount was completed and several hours after the recount results had been certified by Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold. Judge Andrew P. McCallin ruled that election law only gives him the authority to consider recount challenges while a recount is underway and his jurisdiction stops once it is over and is certified.
The recount barely changed the results of the primary election to choose a Republican candidate to challenge Griswold in November’s election with Peters picking up 13 more votes, ending up with about 29% of the vote, according to the secretary of state. Pam Anderson finished in first place with 43% of the vote.
According to McCallin’s ruling, Peters said that the recount could still be challenged because she claimed it was not conducted under the methods outlined in the law. However, McCallin said that argument would allow a recount to be subject to challenge long after it was completed, pointing out that the law lays out ways for challenges to be quickly resolved so election deadlines can be met.
“Allowing these orders to be challenged later would destabilize elections and leave them open for challenge long after the Secretary of State certifies results,” he said.
Peters’ lawsuit claimed that the accuracy of randomly selected machines used to count ballots should have been verified with a hand count of ballots before the recount began.
Peters did not immediately respond to emails or a text seeking comment. Her lawyer in the case, David Wilson, said they disagree with the judge’s ruling and are exploring what to do next.
Some recount observers reported that election machines were tested with test ballots instead of actual ballots cast by voters, Wilson said.
Peters faces several felony charges for her alleged role in allowing unauthorized people to break into her county’s election system in search of proof of the conspiracy theories spun by former President Donald Trump after his 2020 election loss.
She has denied she did anything illegal and contends the charges are politically motivated. She is scheduled to appear in court Wednesday to enter a plea to those charges.
Maine
Internet service providers drop challenge of privacy law
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — One of the strictest internet privacy laws in the United States has withstood a legal challenge, as a group of telecommunication providers has dropped its bid to overturn the Maine standard.
Maine created one of the toughest rules in the nation for internet service providers in 2020 when it began enforcing an “opt-in” web privacy standard. The law stops the service providers from using, disclosing, selling or providing access to customers’ personal information without permission.
Industry associations swiftly sued with a claim that the new law violated their First Amendment rights. A federal judge rejected that challenge, but legal wrangling continued.
The groups, which include the country’s biggest telecommunications providers, filed to dismiss the lawsuit on Sept. 2, said Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey. Frey said the state’s privacy law held up despite the efforts of an “army of industry lawyers organized against us,” and now other states can follow Maine’s lead.
“Maine’s Legislature wisely sought to protect Maine residents by restricting the disclosure and use of their most private and personal information,” Frey said.
The Maine Legislature passed the bill, proposed by former Democratic state Sen. Shenna Bellows, who is now Maine’s secretary of state, in 2019. Internet service providers then sued in February 2020, and attorneys for Maine have been in court defending the law since. The proposal stemmed from a Maine effort to bring back rules implemented during President Barack Obama’s tenure that were repealed by Congress during President Donald Trump’s term.
Industry plaintiffs agreed to reimburse Maine for more than $55,000 in costs incurred defending the law, Frey said.
Supporters of Maine’s law include the ACLU of Maine, which filed court papers in the case in favor of keeping the law on the books. The ACLU said in court papers that the law was “narrowly drawn to directly advance Maine’s substantial interests in protecting consumers’ privacy, freedom of expression, and security.”
Democratic Gov. Janet Mills has also defended the law as “common sense.”
Maine is also the home of another privacy law that regulates the use of facial recognition technology. That law, which came on the books last year, has also been cited as the strictest of its kind in the U.S.
Wisconsin
Guidance approved for disabled absentee voters
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission approved guidance Tuesday for local election clerks making clear that voters with disabilities can receive help from others when mailing or delivering absentee ballots.
The commission voted 4-2 to approve the guidance, which was ordered by a federal judge last week. All three Democrats and one Republican voted in favor of the guidance, while Republican commissioner Don Millis and Robert Spindell voted against it, the Wisconsin State Journal reported.
Clerks will be notified that disabled voters may receive assistance from anyone other than the voter’s employer, an agent of that employer “or officer or agent of the voter’s union.”
Proposals by Millis and Spindell seeking to require those assisting voters to fill out a form proving their identity failed along 3-3 split votes with Democrats opposed to what they described as additional requirements for voters with disabilities.
Under the approved guidance, clerks do not need to confirm a person’s disability or the identity of the voter or assistor to accept the ballot.
Disabled voters filed the federal lawsuit after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that absentee ballots must be delivered by mail or in person to a local clerk’s office or designated alternate site. The majority also held that no one but the voter can return the voter’s ballot in person.
