DENVER—A federal judge began hearing testimony Wednesday on a lawsuit challenging the Colorado secretary of state’s decision to remove an estimated 30,000 people from voter rolls.
U.S. District Judge John Kane said he expected to rule later in the day.
Colorado Common Cause and other groups filed suit last week against Secretary of State Mike Coffman, saying the state illegally removed names from the voter list within 90 days of a federal general election.
They also said the state wrongly removed others whose addresses are listed as undeliverable by the Postal Service.
Lawyers for the state attorney general’s office asked the judge not to order the voters reinstated. They said the names were removed properly and that no eligible voter will be denied the right to vote.
Linda and James Johnson of Colorado Springs testified they had been removed from the rolls but didn’t know it until they were contacted by a lawyer working on the lawsuit.
The Johnsons said they registered in May and had received mail ballots, but when they discovered they were no longer registered, El Paso County officials told them their votes wouldn’t be counted.
Hilary Rudy of the secretary of state’s office testified that the Johnsons’ names were removed because somone submitted another set of voter registration forms in their names in September with a different address.
Rudy said the duplicate forms may have been submitted by a registration drive.
Rudy said the Johnson’s ballots would count because the law gives voters the benefit of the doubt.
