A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit from three Democratic presidential electors against Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams alleging that Williams violated their constitutional rights during the highly contentious 2016 Electoral College vote.
The trio contended that Williams acted unlawfully by not allowing them to vote their conscience instead of on behalf of Colorado voters when casting their presidential votes.
But U.S. District Court Senior Judge Wiley Y. Daniel rejected that premise, saying they were requesting he “strike down Colorado’s elector statute that codifies the historical understanding and long-standing practice of binding electors to the people’s vote, and to sanction a new system that would render the people’s vote merely advisory.”
In his 27-page ruling, Daniel added: “I reject this invitation, finding not only that plaintiffs lack standing but that their claims fail to state a claim upon which relief can be granted.”
The lawsuit stemmed from Democratic elector Micheal Baca’s decision to vote for Ohio Gov. John Kasich instead of Hillary Clinton during the Electoral College process in December 2016. He was removed as an elector by Williams as a result, a decision that put Colorado in the center of the debate about the Electoral College following Donald Trump’s victory. That’s when Baca and other Democratic electors tried to deny Trump the votes he needed to take control of the White House.
Democratic electors Baca, Polly Baca (unrelated to Micheal) and Robert Nemanich were plaintiffs in the lawsuit, filed in August. They were backed and represented by Equal Citizens, an advocacy group founded by Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig.
Polly Baca and Nemanich voted for Clinton, as the law requires. (Clinton won Colorado, with 48 percent of the vote to Trump’s 43 percent.)
“According to the binding court decisions, faithless electors can be removed, which preserves the votes of the nearly 3 million Coloradans who cast their ballots in the November election,” Williams said in an earlier written statement. “The only thing I asked the electors to do was follow the law.”
Jason Harrow, the chief counsel for Equal Citizens, suggested the group was looking toward challenging the ruling.
“We disagree strongly with Judge Daniels’ opinion, which ignores both binding precedent and the compelling evidence that the Framers of the Constitution intended presidential electors to be able to exercise independent judgment in casting their votes for President of the United States,” he said in a statement. “But this decision is only the first word in our case, not the last, and it’s the last that ultimately matters. On to the Court of Appeals.”