AURORA | With legal briefs from both Secretary of State Wayne Williams and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ryan Frazier now filed with the Colorado Supreme Court, the fate of the former Aurora City Councilman’s campaign is now in the hands of the justices.
Frazier filed a response brief with the Colorado Supreme just after 5 a.m. Friday, May 20, marking the last step in what has been a lengthy appeals process.
The brief was technically due Thursday, May 20, according to Secretary of State spokeswoman Lynn Bartels.
Frazier, whose name will appear on the June 28 Republican primary ballot, is arguing that the court should require Williams to accept an additional 100 petition signatures that the Secretary’s office had previously rejected.
If Frazier does not get the court to order about 70 more signatures to be accepted, any votes cast in the primary for Frazier will not be counted, according to a pact the candidate agreed to earlier this month.
Senate candidates seeking to make the primary ballot by petition were required to collect 1,500 signatures from registered Republican voters in each of the state’s seven congressional districts.
Frazier’s campaign is hanging much of its fate on the court’s interpretation of “substantial compliance,” which refers to the level of adherence to the state’s Election Code. Frazier says he has substantially complied with election rules, while the Secretary asserts that he reviews petitions under a slightly different standard of “technical compliance,” under which the disputed signatures for Frazier were thrown out.
In a separate brief filed earlier this week, Williams claimed that Frazier should have brought up his qualms with the state’s election process months earlier. Frazier’s team attempted to dismantle that argument.
“It would require Frazier and other candidates to pore through the election code, identify all potential constitutional defects and the hypothetical harm that they might cause, and preemptively challenge these defects, all while running a political campaign,” Frazier’s attorneys wrote. “This requires super-human foresight and resources that do not exist.”
In court, Frazier is represented by former Secretary of State Scott Gessler and Geoffrey Blue.
Frazier also reaffirmed his request for compensated attorney fees.