Conspiracists’ canvassing effort raised alarm bells, Colorado election official testifies

Colorado’s status as a hotbed of the election denial movement is in the spotlight of a civil rights trial in federal court this week.

Defendants Ashe Epp, Shawn Smith and Holly Kasun are accused of violating civil rights laws by launching a door-to-door “voter verification” project in at least four Colorado counties in an attempt to prove debunked allegations of widespread fraud in Colorado’s voting systems. A trio of voting rights groups, represented by the nonprofit Free Speech For People, filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Colorado in 2022.

All three defendants, through their work with U.S. Election Integrity Plan and other groups, are or were associates of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, one of the the nation’s most prominent election conspiracy theorists and a leading benefactor of election denial causes.

Alongside other far-right activists and media figures, they’re part of a constellation of Colorado-based conspiracy theorists who were instrumental in amplifying debunked claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election, which former President Donald Trump lost, in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6 insurrection. Smith, a retired Air Force colonel and Woodland Park resident, is the president of Cause of America, a Lindell-funded “election integrity” nonprofit.

A key piece of evidence in the case, a “County and Local Organizing Playbook” containing instructions for canvassing efforts by election deniers, was prepared by USEIP to share with other groups at an August 2021 “Cyber Symposium” summit convened by Lindell in South Dakota.

Epp, a Douglas County resident who was described by plaintiffs’ attorneys on Monday as the playbook’s “chief architect,” said during testimony that she personally canvassed three times, twice in El Paso County and once in Douglas County. Defendants and their attorneys have disputed the relevance of the document, which they say was authored after much of the group’s Colorado canvassing efforts had already been conducted.

“This was a knowledge-sharing document,” said Epp. “It was not intended for audiences in Colorado. It was not a playbook for intimidation.”

Epp’s work as a commentator and podcaster was the subject of scrutiny during her testimony. Epp was formerly a co-host of the Conservative Daily podcast alongside Joe Oltmann, a key figure in Colorado election denial circles who has repeatedly made headlines for calling for the execution of his political opponents.

During opening arguments on Monday, Epp, who is representing herself in the trial, acknowledged that though she often communicates “in a way that my political or ideological opponents may find distasteful or even offensive,” none of her speech has risen to the level of voter intimidation.

Claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent or compromised have been debunked by elections officials, experts, media investigations, law enforcement, the courts and former Trump’s own campaign and administration officials.

Elections officials’ concerns

Plaintiffs have characterized USEIP canvassers’ wearing of badges and use of “official-sounding” names as a targeted effort to intimidate voters. During opening arguments on Monday, Amy Erickson, attorney for the plaintiffs, sought to tie the activity to “our nation’s troubling history of voter intimidation and disenfranchisement.”

The lawsuit alleges the defendants’ conduct violated two federal laws: the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits any person from “attempt(ing) to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for voting or attempting to vote”; and the Enforcement Act of 1871, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, which prohibits “conspir(ing) to prevent by force, intimidation, or threat, any citizen who is lawfully entitled to vote, from giving his support or advocacy” to a candidate for office. USEIP canvassers, the lawsuit alleges, often targeted “high-density housing, communities experiencing growth among racial minority voters, and communities in which a high percentage of voters supported Democratic candidates in the 2020 election.”

Epp, echoing the prior testimony of Smith, said that her interactions with residents while canvassing had been positive, with the exception of one older woman who seemed “skeptical” but not “contentious in any way.”

But Chris Beall, Colorado’s deputy secretary of state, testified Tuesday that the group’s canvassing raised alarm bells within Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s office, which issued an advisory alerting voters to reports of “unofficial door-to-door canvassing” in September 2021.

“Our concern was that the use of untrained, partisan-motivated canvassers, who may or may not have been armed, would be threatening to the people they encountered,” Beall said. “The secretary wished to ensure that people who might have their doors knocked on would know their rights. They had a constitutional right to the secrecy of their vote, and they had no obligation to disclose how they voted.”

Under cross-examination, Beall said that while the act of canvassing itself doesn’t necessarily constitute intimidation, the concern stemmed from Colorado elections officials’ belief that USEIP volunteers were “biased, intent on an outcome and unlikely to abide by standard survey techniques when conducting their questions.”

Griswold’s office received two written complaints about “voter verification” canvassing in the summer of 2021, both of which came from Mesa County voters. Though USEIP organizers had a volunteer “captain” in Mesa County and communicated with likeminded activists there, they maintain that the canvassing activity was a separate effort by a different group.

Beall was barred from sharing information during his testimony about other reported complaints, relayed by county clerks to top officials in the secretary of state’s office, by Judge Charlotte Sweeney, who called the information “three levels of hearsay.” Sweeney also blocked an effort by plaintiffs attorneys to ask Beall whether officials and staff in his office — all of whom are required to maintain active voter registrations, he testified — felt intimidated by USEIP’s activity.

‘Please get off my property’

One of the written complaints to the secretary of state’s office came from Yvette Roberts, a Grand Junction resident and retired history teacher. Roberts was called to the witness stand on Tuesday and testified that a man and a woman wearing “professional-looking” badges knocked on her door in June 2021. The man, she said, began asking questions about whether she voted in 2020 and whether she was the only registered voter in her home.

“I’m a little old lady,” Roberts said. “I don’t want to tell any strange man on my doorstep that I live alone.”

Roberts said she felt intimidated by the encounter, which she said took a turn when the man then asked about how she had voted in 2020. In addition to her complaint to the secretary of state, she filed a report with the Grand Junction Police Department.

“I didn’t think that was any of his business,” she said. “So I thought, gosh, this has gone on long enough, and I asked them both to leave. I said, ‘I’ve had enough. Please get off my property. You’re trespassing.’”

Attorneys for the defendants pressed Roberts on what they characterized as inconsistencies in her description of the incident, such as her description of the badges worn by the canvassers as “homemade” in her initial complaint, and as “official-looking” in subsequent statements. She testified that the badges appeared to have been purchased at an office supply store, and were part of “an attempt to look official.”

At least two other groups were conducting canvassing efforts similar to USEIP’s at the time, they claimed. Roberts said that it was apparent the canvassers at her door had received training, but acknowledged she couldn’t be sure which group they belonged to — only that they told her they were part of an “investigation, or inquiry, or something like that.”

“It seemed they belonged to some organization like (USEIP),” Roberts said. “I didn’t know what organization it was.”

That conflicts with a declaration signed by Roberts in earlier proceedings in the case, in which she positively identified the two individuals as representing USEIP, said Scott Reisch, an attorney for Smith.

“No one told me it was,” Roberts said under questioning. “I believed it to be at the time.”

Misinformation and threats

Epp used her cross-examination of Beall to relitigate a variety of well-worn talking points used by conservatives to cast doubt on Colorado elections. They included a 2017 report finding vulnerabilities in certain voting systems that were subsequently addressed, and a controversy over voter-registration postcards mailed by the secretary of state’s office in 2022, 30,000 of which were mistakenly sent to noncitizens because of a database error.

“We seem to have drifted into a fishing expedition, so I’m going to ask you to move on,” Sweeney told Epp.

Beall earlier testified that there have been around 20 prosecutions of individuals “who the prosecution alleged were either not eligible to vote, or voted more than once” in the 2020 election. Elections experts and law enforcement agencies consistently say that such voter fraud is extremely rare.

Audits of 2020 election results in Colorado similarly uncovered limited cases of human error but “in no instance” did they show “machine error” in tabulating voters, Beall said. Colorado election conspiracy theorists, including Oltmann and Smith, played a key role in surfacing and amplifying allegations of systemic election fraud in connection with Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems.

Those false claims figured prominently in attempts by Trump’s legal team to litigate election results and in wider conspiracy theories alleging the election was fraudulent. The allegations led to a series of defamation lawsuits filed by the company against right-wing media figures, including a case that produced a landmark $787.5 million settlement with Fox News in 2023.

Other portions of trial testimony on Tuesday again focused on Smith’s comments during a speech at a Castle Rock church in February 2022, in which he claimed he had evidence implicating Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold in election fraud and said that anyone involved in election fraud “deserved to hang.”

“I was very concerned,” Beall said of Smith’s remarks. “I believed the video clip showed the chanting and reaction at the church in Castle Rock to illustrate the impact that Col. Smith’s statement was having on the people in that audience, and was likely to cause more threats. I believe history has proven me right.”

“We now have a security service that monitors threats agains the secretary,” Beall added. “And they are extraordinary.”

The trial, which began on Monday with testimony from Smith, will continue Wednesday with additional testimony from Beth Hendrix, director of the League of Women Voters of Colorado — one of the plaintiffs in the case, alongside the Colorado NAACP and Mi Familia Vota. The plaintiffs are seeking an order from the court finding that the defendants violated the VRA and the KKK Act and enjoining them from future intimidating activity, as well as attorney’s fees.