Case: Bray v. Griswold

This case is about the ability of potential political candidates to gather online signatures in their efforts to appear on the ballot through petitions signed by state citizens. This plaintiff was a political candidate seeking to appear on the 2020 ballot for the United States Senate in the State of Colorado. Under the Election Code, major-party candidates seeking to appear on a Ballot through a petition had 57 days starting on January 1, 2020 to gather valid signatures of at least 1,500 registered Democratic electors in each congressional district in Colorado. While the candidate began gathering signatures in January, she encountered “serious problems” collecting signatures in March of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which ultimately resulted in an insufficient number of signatures collected for the candidate to appear on the ballot.

On April 13, 2020, Plaintiff filed this lawsuit in the District Court of the City and County of Denver, Colorado City and County Building, with District Judge Christopher J. Bauman. Plaintiff sued Colorado’s Secretary of State, Jena Griswold, in her official capacity as Secretary under section 1-1-102 of the Colorado Revised Statutes (C.R.S.), the Uniform Election Code of 1992, as well as section 1-1-107, C.R.S., seeking Declaratory Relief. Plaintiff claimed that the state of emergency declared by Colorado Governor, Jared Polis, during the COVID-19 pandemic prevented her from gathering the statutorily-required number of signatures for her petition to appear on the Senate Ballot. Specifically, the candidate asked the court to: 1) cease the in-person signature requirement for potential political candidate’s ballot initiatives; 2) allow online signature collection for ballot initiatives due to the public health emergency of COVID-19; 3) order the Secretary to place candidate’s name on the primary ballot due to her “substantial efforts to comply” with the petition’s signatory requirements; 4) order an equitable resolution to the disparate and inequitable treatment of candidates in light of the COVID-19 pandemic; or 5) to consider an emergency equitable resolution to the aforementioned issues.

On April 21, 2020, the Secretary of the State of Colorado filed a Hearing Brief which asserted: 1) the Court did not have jurisdiction to resolve the dispute because there was no breach or neglect of her duties as Secretary or other wrongful act under the C.R.S.; 2) if the Court did have jurisdiction, a neutral mathematical formula should be applied to this and any future candidate petitions affected by the pandemic to determine if substantial compliance with the statute has been met; 3) the Court lacked authority to grant such relief as to change the Election Code to allow online signature gathering on the eve of the primary election; and 4) the Court lacked jurisdiction in a section 1-1-113 proceeding to consider an equal protection claim.

The Court ultimately found that they had jurisdiction to hear a dispute involving a violation of the Election Code. The court specifically highlighted section 1-1-113 of the Code which provides "When any controversy arises between any official charged with any duty or function under this code and any candidate... alleging that a person charged with a duty... is about to commit a breach or neglect of duty... upon a finding of good cause, the district court shall issue an order requiring substantial compliance with the provisions of this code."

The Court dismissed the candidate's online-signature collection request because the deadline for signature submission on a petition had passed at the time the case was heard. The court noted that Plaintiff had only collected 25.9% of the total number of valid signatures required by section 1-4-801(2)(c)(II), and did not meet the required number of signatures in any individual district.

The Court further narrowed the issue to whether the 25.9% of the required total signatures that Plaintiff did collect demonstrated a "significant modicum of support" from the state electorate to justify the candidate's presence on the ballot; the Court found this percentage was not sufficient, even during a Global Pandemic. The Court reasoned that collecting 50% of required signatures during a Pandemic likely would have been reasonable, but that Plaintiff fell short even under this proposed highly lenient standard. The Court was not convinced the Secretary's proposed mathematical formula would be a proper method to apply, and refused to do so. The Court also acknowledged that while the Plaintiff did make good faith efforts to comply with the statutory signature requirements, the effort is not outweighed by how few signatures she gathered in total.

The final holding of the court found that Plaintiff failed to show a "significant modicum of support" from the state electorate to justify placing her name on the ballot, and as a result Plaintiff failed to substantially comply with the Election Code's signature threshold, distribution, and validity requirements. Plaintiff's name was not placed on the ballot for the 2020 election. The case was closed on April 27, 2020.