A Denver district court judge on Friday ruled against state lawmakers and ordered them to stop using a secret ballot system to rank bills.
In his ruling, Judge David Goldberg said “the public has the right to know” how individual lawmakers vote to prioritize bills and that the so-called quadratic voting system at the Capitol violates Colorado’s Open Meetings Law.
KUNC Investigative Reporter Scott Franz broke the story in 2022, revealing how secret ballots were quietly killing bills and raising transparency concerns at the statehouse. In the quadratic voting system, each spring since 2019 lawmakers clicked on a personalized link to an anonymous survey. They then used digital tokens to vote for the bills they thought should get a piece of the budget.
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Franz spoke with KUNC’s Mike Lyle on Tuesday about the ruling, the impact it could have at the statehouse, and how lawmakers and transparency advocates are reacting to it.
Jeff Roberts, the executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition (CFOIC), told KUNC the judge’s order is a “very important” ruling that could impact lawmakers beyond the current legislative session, which starts this week.
“I do think it puts them on notice that using processes like this, that may be very efficient ways of doing business, are not necessarily the open way of doing business that the law requires,” Roberts said. “The judge even said, ‘Hey, this seems like a useful tool, but the way you're using it is not compliant with the Open Meetings Law.’”
The CFOIC sent lawmakers a letter in 2022 alleging the secret ballot system violated the Open Meetings Law.
Democratic leaders at the Capitol defended the system and continued to use it.
The conservative group Advance Colorado then filed a lawsuit against lawmakers over the secret ballot system in July. Michael Fields, the leader of Advance Colorado, told KUNC the court order will help the public hold elected officials accountable.
“It means you get to know what your legislator thinks about legislation that's going to be in front of them,” Fields said. “I think that was at the heart of why we brought (the lawsuit) and why it was successful.”
Spokespeople for House Speaker Julie McCluskie, D-Dillon, and Sen. President Steve Fenberg, D-Boulder, have not responded to interview requests from KUNC about Friday’s court ruling.
Rep. Bob Marshall, D-Highlands Ranch, was one of a handful of lawmakers specifically named in the lawsuit. He told KUNC he has accepted the judge’s order.
“It's something that probably does need to be closed down,” he said of anonymous quadratic voting at the Capitol. “I've made the point that it's OK, as long as we just disclosed what all those votes are, you know, the coins that we put in for the voting.”
In the ruling, the judge left open the possibility of letting lawmakers continue to use quadratic voting if they find a way to bring it into compliance with the Open Meetings Law.
