Federal Trial Challenging Illegal Voter Intimidation in Colorado Begins

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From: The League of Women Voters of Colorado

July 15, 2024

Federal Trial Challenging Illegal Voter Intimidation in Colorado Begins

Trial begins today in NAACP Colorado, League of Women Voters of Colorado, and Mi Familia Vota v. United States Election Integrity Plan; plaintiffs argue that USEIP’s door-to-door intimidation campaign violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871

DENVER – Trial begins today in federal court in Colorado to stop an illegal campaign to intimidate voters. The Colorado Montana Wyoming State Area Conference of the NAACP (NAACP Colorado), League of Women Voters of Colorado (LWVCO), and Mi Familia Vota (MFV), represented by Free Speech For People and Lathrop GPM, are suing the founders and leaders of the United States Election Integrity Plan (USEIP), an extremist organization with ties to the January 6th Capitol Insurrection.

The named individual defendants are Shawn Smith, Ashley Epp, and Holly Kasun. The lawsuit, based on the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, seeks federal court intervention to stop USEIP’s leaders’ voter intimidation campaign in Colorado, where the group’s agents, some of whom are armed, have used public voter lists to go door-to-door interrogating voters.

During trial, plaintiffs will demonstrate that the Defendants’ door-to-door campaign — which Defendants widely publicized — attempted to and did intimidate voters and forced the plaintiff voting organizations to divert their already scarce resources toward protecting voters from intimidation.

On January 3, 2023, the US Department of Justice submitted a legal brief declaring support for the plaintiffs’ legal arguments in the case.

USEIP’s “County & Local Organizing Playbook” (the “Playbook”), a public document that sets forth the organization’s principles and goals, instructs participants on the door-to-door campaign, and includes explicit references to USEIP being engaged in a fight or a war, demonstrate that the organization’s leaders’ efforts attempted to and did threaten and intimidate voters, purportedly in order to support debunked claims of election fraud.

“Defendants’ objectives are clear. By planning to, threatening to, and actually deploying armed agents to knock on doors throughout the state of Colorado, USEIP is engaged in voter intimidation,” the plaintiffs state in their complaint.

“USEIP’s public-facing actions are a clear signal to Colorado voters—especially voters of color—that to exercise their constitutional rights and vote in an upcoming election means facing interrogation by potentially armed and threatening USEIP agents at their doorstep,” the plaintiffs continued.

USEIP’s intimidation efforts particularly impact communities of color, which have historically faced institutionalized barriers, violent threats, and intimidation for exercising their right to vote.

The voting rights organizations seek to block the defendants from carrying out further intimidating door-to-door campaigns leading up to and after the November 2024 election and leading up to and after any other subsequent election.