By Michael Karlik | Colorado Politics
Colorado’s second-highest court agreed last week that the state’s current method of adjudicating campaign finance complaints is constitutional and is not the “very definition of tyranny.”
For several years, state law has allowed any person to file a complaint alleging a campaign finance violation, which the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office then screens, decides whether to dismiss or investigate, and potentially imposes a penalty. Legislators enacted the process after a federal judge decided in 2018 that the prior system unconstitutionally “outsourced” enforcement to individual, inexperienced complainants.