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Secretary of State Jena Griswold Statement on Charges Against Grassfire Petition Circulators
Denver, June 20, 2023 - Today, Secretary of State Jena Griswold released the following statement regarding the charges brought against six individuals who were employed by Grassfire LLC, a Wyoming-based petition circulator firm, to circulate candidate petitions in Colorado in 2022.
“Any person who breaks election law should be held accountable,” said Secretary Griswold. “My Office will continue to preserve a fair process for candidates to petition onto the ballot in Colorado.”
In 2022, civil servants in the Secretary of State’s Office rejected an unprecedented number of signatures on a candidate’s petition. Out of the 4,462 lines turned in by the candidate, 3,417 were rejected and the petition was deemed insufficient. Of the 3,417 signature lines rejected, the Department identified 1,967 signatures failed to match the signatures on file for the listed voters, 900 signatures where the name given in the petition did not appear to be a Colorado voter, and 21 signatures where the listed voter had passed away prior to the date of the signature in the petition. Additional signatures were rejected for various other reasons. After finding the pattern of rejections for one candidate, the Office noticed a similar, albeit lower, number of petition signature irregularities in a separate candidate petition on which the same petition circulators worked. The Secretary of State’s Office referred the matter to the Attorney General, the Denver District Attorney and the Jefferson County District Attorney for investigation.
Today, the Attorney General’s Office announced that charges have been filed against six individuals who were employed by Grassfire for felony attempt to influence a public official and misdemeanor perjury.
In interviews with law enforcement investigators, the owners of Grassfire indicated that they were not aware of the actions of the circulators that they had hired, and that they did not authorize those actions. The Attorney General’s Office has not charged either the company Grassfire or its owners with any violations of Colorado law.
Colorado Law prohibits someone who has been convicted of crimes associated with petition fraud in Colorado from applying for a petition entity license or from paying petition circulators in the future.
In cases where either the Secretary of State’s Office or petition processing partners at another state agency identify petition lines that appear to be fraudulent, the lines in question are first rereviewed by the civil servants in the Secretary of State’s Office. The civil servants compare the in-question signature lines to the matching voter records (if any) and signatures in SCORE, Colorado’s voter registration database. Historically, the Secretary of State’s Office has caught cases of fraud because signatures on the petitions don’t match registered voters’ signatures in the State’s voter registration database. After the multiple rounds of internal reviews, if the Office has a reasonable basis to believe that there is potential fraud, the matter is then referred to the Attorney General or the District Attorney.
A candidate petition signature submitted to the Secretary’s Office is reviewed following the standards set forth in Election rule 15 (PDF).
During the 2023 legislative session, the Secretary of State’s Office championed legislation (PDF), which has now become law, to increase the penalties against petition circulator companies that knowingly allow their circulators to engage in petition fraud, and further tighten the requirements for petition circulator companies to obtain a license from the Office to engage in paid petition circulation.
