This November, voters in Douglas County will decide whether or not to add two more commissioners to the county’s current three-person board. The Douglas County Republican Party, which opposes the proposed expansion, has built a new section on its website that promises to doxx all the residents who signed the petition to place this question on the ballot.
“Petition signatures are public records,” reads the website. “When signatures are turned in and become publicly available, this page will be updated with public signer information.”
Petition signatures are indeed public records, but publishing a map identifying the home addresses of thousands of signatories is unprecedented. Organizers of the 3to5 campaign turned in nearly 23,000 signatures last month. County Clerk Sheri Davis has since verified over 20,000 of them, meaning that voters will see the expansion question on their ballots this November.
Those Dougco residents, along with anyone else on the internet, might also see their home addresses displayed on a searchable map. The DCGOP’s website has a section devoted to opposing the “3to5” commissioner expansion initiative In addition to making arguments against adding two more officials, the website also features an as-yet non-functional search tool that will allow anyone to look up not only the name, but also see the home address of any Douglas County resident who signed the petition on an “Interactive Signer Map.”
The new site is the creation of Dougco GOP Vice Chair Matt Smith, who says that the party has not yet requested the data and may not ever do so.
“It could happen. We have not asked for it yet,” said Smith. “It’s not a priority. That website was made several months ago, so it’s just not an active priority at the moment.”
“There’s no malicious intent. I’m sure you could, if you wanted to, you could spin it and make it look [that way] through a lens, but that’s not the intent. The intent is literally just transparency on all of this. … It’s been sold as a bipartisan thing across the county, so who really were the people that showed up to this? Are the majority of these people in Parker or Highlands Ranch? We don’t know. And so that’s the piece that I think that it could shed some light on. If you’re asking me if our goal is to doxx people that sign this, that is not the intent at all.”
Smith will be on a Douglas County ballot this November himself, though only in Castle Rock, where he is running for town council.
Douglas County Republicans Chair Robin Webb, who also serves as the executive director of the State GOP, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. This article will be updated with any response received.
Asked if her office was aware of her county party’s public proposal to post the home addresses of thousands of her voters on a searchable map, a spokesperson for Clerk Sheri Davis confirmed that no one has yet requested the signature list.
“We know our voters care about the conduct of elections, and we take our responsibility very seriously. We have not been approached with this request and will continue to focus on conducting elections in Douglas County with utmost integrity.”
State Rep. Bob Marshall (D-Highlands Ranch), who supports the 3to5 initiative and who signed the petition himself, called the GOP’s webpage “part of an ongoing attempt at voter intimidation by a small minority of people who are opposed to this being on the ballot.
Reached for comment, former Douglas County Commissioner Lora Thomas, who also backs the expansion effort, shares Marshall’s view on the proposed map of signatories’ homes. “The Douglas County Republican Party’s purpose for existence is to get Republicans elected, yet this threat is nothing more than a continuation of the intimidation tactics that [County Commissioner] George Teal and his colleagues have demonstrated to the public that they are supposed to represent, said Thomas” She also noted that back in 2023, when she served alongside Commissioners Teal and Abe Laydon, her colleagues censured her for a piece in her e-newsletter that linked to the county’s cultural council website, which included a member list, as part of a budget policy disagreement. At the time, Commissioner Laydon accused her of doxxing the cultural council members, despite their names (but not addresses) being already listed on the county’s own website.
During the signature-gathering phase of the 3to5 campaign, Teal told Denver7 that he supported the effort, but had been too busy to sign it. He also said that expanding the board would “effectively end term limits in Douglas County,” because he believes commissioners could move between district and at‑large seats, a legal claim that has been disputed by various experts.
Reached via text, Commissioner Teal told the Colorado Times Recorder he was unaware of the webpage and its proposed map, but said that he didn’t think that he really had any concerns. “I’m sure everyone who signed was told by the petition gatherers that they were signing a public document and that their names could be made known to the wider public,” said Teal.
Following publication, Commissioner Laydon offered the following statement via text: “I’m not aware of any official request by the county Republican Party to take such action. That said, the bigger picture is that government problems are rarely solved by adding politicians,” said Laydon. “We have ended homelessness, prevented wildfires, and kept Douglas the healthiest and most prosperous county in the state with only three commissioners. I don’t think when given the facts that voters will want their hard-earned dollars spent on a solution in search of a problem.”
Commissioner Van Winkle did not respond to a text request for comment. This article will be updated with any response received.
