The Republican National Committee filed suit in Denver District Court on June 26 against Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, targeting a state law and her office’s published guidance that allow U.S. citizens who have never lived in Colorado — or in some cases anywhere in the United States — to register and vote in Colorado elections by inheriting a parent’s, guardian’s, or spouse’s prior Colorado residency. Rep. Jeff Crank and Douglas County Clerk and Recorder Sheri Davis joined the RNC as plaintiffs. The case, No. 2026CV32338, is assigned to Second Judicial District Judge Ericka Englert.
At the center of the complaint is C.R.S. § 1-8.3-102(2)(d), enacted under Colorado’s Uniform Military and Overseas Voters Act. That statute extends registration eligibility to a U.S. citizen born outside the United States whose parent, guardian, spouse, or civil union partner was a Colorado resident immediately before leaving the country — meaning Colorado was their last U.S. residence at the time of departure. Griswold’s published UOCAVA FAQ goes further. It instructs that a person who has never lived in the United States may register to vote in Colorado if a qualifying family member “was a resident of Colorado before leaving the U.S.” — at any point, not necessarily at the moment of departure. Under the FAQ’s language, a family member who lived in Colorado decades ago, later moved to another state, and then moved abroad would satisfy the requirement. The statute requires Colorado as the last U.S. residence; the FAQ requires only that Colorado appear somewhere in the family member’s history. Douglas County alone, according to the complaint, carries more than 100 registered voters who have never lived in the United States.
The RNC’s constitutional argument rests on Article VII, Section 1 of the Colorado Constitution, which states that only a U.S. citizen who “has resided in this state for such time as may be prescribed by law” is qualified to vote. The complaint’s core claim is direct: “Residency is not inherited and cannot be established by proxy.” When a statute conflicts with the Colorado Constitution, the complaint argues, the Constitution controls — and because the federal UOCAVA law covers only those who previously resided in a state, Colorado’s extension to never-residents goes beyond what federal law requires and receives no protection from federal preemption.
Clerk Davis’s position illustrates the practical bind the guidance creates. She is bound by Griswold’s instructions in administering Douglas County elections but cannot reconcile those instructions with her oath to uphold the Colorado Constitution. The complaint frames her position as a direct, judicially cognizable injury.
The plaintiffs are asking for four things: a declaration that C.R.S. § 1-8.3-102(2)(d) is unconstitutional as applied to never-residents; a declaration that Griswold’s FAQ guidance is void; a permanent injunction barring registration and ballot issuance to never-residents; and an order requiring Griswold to cancel existing never-resident registrations from the SCORE statewide voter registration database.
The Colorado lawsuit is part of a coordinated RNC campaign now spanning six states — Colorado, Nebraska, Virginia, Arizona, North Carolina, and Michigan. The outcomes have split. North Carolina’s Court of Appeals struck down an equivalent statute in April 2025, ruling that a person who has never lived in North Carolina cannot establish domicile there by inheritance; North Carolina’s Supreme Court did not disturb that holding on never-residents. A subsequent June 2026 summary judgment order in Kivett v. NC State Board of Elections extended the reasoning to federal elections in North Carolina and is attached as Exhibit A to the Colorado complaint. Michigan went the other way. The Michigan Court of Claims dismissed the RNC’s suit with prejudice in April 2026, finding the Michigan legislature holds authority to define residency for voting purposes and that its statute is consistent with the state constitution and federal law.
Approximately 40,000 UOCAVA voters are registered in Colorado, less than one percent of the state’s 4.1 million active voters. The complaint cites University of Florida research showing Colorado UOCAVA ballots returned 53.1 percent Democratic versus 11.6 percent Republican in 2024 pre-election returns, and states on the record that the never-resident subset is “disproportionately non-Republican in their partisan composition relative to the Colorado electorate as a whole.”
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