The Douglas County GOP has taken down a page on its website that promised to doxx county residents who signed a ballot petition it opposed, following the Colorado Times Recorder’s reporting.
The page, called “See Who Signed,” promised to post the names and addresses of every person who signed the “3to5” petition to vote on increasing the number of county commissioners, and create an “interactive map” of the signers’ homes. It offered the public a means to “search addresses, explore signer locations, and view public petition records geographically.”
The Douglas County Clerk verified that over 20,000 voters signed the petition to put the expansion proposal on this November’s ballot.
Dougco Vice Chair Matt Smith, who created the page months ago while the ballot initiative campaign was still in the signature-gathering process, told CTR last week that the purpose of the page was transparency, not to intimidate voters.
“There’s no malicious intent,” said Smith. “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.”
Sometime over the weekend, the page was removed, though the link from the site’s anti-3to5 page is still visible, but non-functional.
Neither Smith nor party Chair Robin Webb, who also works as executive director of the Colorado GOP, responded to inquiries as to why the page has been taken down. This article will be updated with any response received.
