Petition seeks to disqualify Killin from CO-5 ballot days before election 

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice

Wayne Laugesen published a court petition on Oct. 29 asking a Denver judge to declare Jessica Killin unqualified for a ballot that has been in voters’ hands since early October.

Election Day is Tuesday.

The verified petition names Killin, the Democrat nominee in Colorado’s 5th Congressional District, and Secretary of State Jena Griswold in her official capacity. Laugesen said Denver District Court accepted it for filing on Oct. 28. RMV has not independently confirmed the filing, and no hearing had been scheduled as of Oct. 29.

Laugesen is the petitioner. He writes the Substack newsletter Wayne’s Word and has reported on Killin multiple times this year.

What the petition argues

The constitutional requirement is one sentence. A member of the House must, when elected, be an inhabitant of the state.

The petition says Killin will not be.

Its central document is an Oct. 1, 2026 Montgomery County, Maryland property tax bill for a house in Chevy Chase that Killin owns with her husband, Rajeev Date. That bill designates the property their principal residence, according to the petition, and an earlier bill for the same house, covering 2016 to 2017, said it was not one.

Amy Curtis at Townhall first reported the change on Oct. 21. RMV has not reviewed either tax bill.

Maryland’s homestead credit goes to one dwelling only, defined as a house used as the owner’s principal residence and actually occupied for more than six months of a 12-month period. The owner must reside there by July 1 of the tax year. Since 2007 the state has required a one-time application.

A Maryland principal residence is described differently in the petition, as the single place where an owner regularly lives, votes, holds a driver’s license and files income taxes. That formulation does not appear in the homestead statute. It matches a Maryland regulation defining the principal residence of a renter under a separate credit program.

Colorado law points the same way as the petition on the underlying question. Under state statute, residence is a person’s principal or primary home, and a person is not considered to have gained a residence in Colorado while retaining a home or domicile elsewhere.

Colorado courts have applied that statute to an out-of-state domicile question before. In Kuhn v. Williams, the Colorado Supreme Court held that the statutory factors control, and faulted a lower court for relying on a petition circulator’s stated intent instead of the objective signs of where he actually lived.

Other material sits on top of that. On an Aug. 28, 2025 political contribution, according to the petition, Killin listed the Chevy Chase address while giving her occupation as candidate and her employer as her own Colorado campaign.

Date has been registered to vote at the Colorado Springs house since Jan. 21, 2026, the petition says. A couple gets one principal residence, it argues, and the two records point to different states.

As for Killin’s own time during the campaign, the petition says she has continued to spend substantial time around Washington. For that it points to social media posts from a fitness studio in the city’s Tenleytown neighborhood, near the Chevy Chase house, that listed her among its members in August and September.

Among the documents Laugesen wants the court to order produced are her Colorado voter registration, her driver’s license, her 2025 tax returns and any Maryland homestead filings.

Laugesen gave RMV this statement:

Federal and state law require that a member of the House of Representatives lives in the state he or she represents. It defines residing in the state to include living in that person’s “principal” residence. I’m holding a tax document dated this month that says [Killin’s] “principal” residence, by her admission, is in Maryland. This is probably because of a homestead exemption in Maryland that we don’t have in Colorado. It’s all about the money. So, she’s either committing tax fraud in Maryland or election fraud in Colorado.

He pointed to no finding by any tax or election authority in either state.

Three parts of the statement go further than the record does.

Colorado’s residence statute governs voter registration, not qualification for the U.S. House, which the Constitution sets.

Nothing established so far shows Killin made the designation herself.

And Colorado does have a homestead property tax exemption, available to seniors, disabled veterans and Gold Star spouses, a limit Laugesen described in his own Oct. 26 piece.

Killin’s campaign responded on Oct. 29 through campaign manager Emily Dalgleish:

Jeff Crank and his allies have spent this entire campaign lying about Jessica Killin and misleading voters in order to cover up Crank’s record of raising costs and voting repeatedly to cover up the Epstein files. Now that they realize they can’t win at the ballot box, they’re taking their flailing, desperate campaign to the courtroom in a baseless complaint filed by a right-wing activist. It’s the last resort of a campaign that has run out of ideas, run out of time, and run out of ways to win.

The campaign also sent a statement from its election lawyer, Mark Grueskin:

This complaint is ridiculous. Jessica Killin has clearly resided here for more than the time required to qualify for the 2026 ballot. Killin’s real property, driver’s license, and tax records all establish her as a Colorado resident and voter. If ever there was a desperate, last-minute election lawsuit that has no chance of succeeding, this is it.

The records Grueskin names are three of the categories the petition asks the court to order produced. The campaign did not provide them to RMV.

On the Epstein files, Crank voted for the Epstein Files Transparency Act on Nov. 18, 2025, in the only up-or-down vote the House held on it. It passed 427 to 1.

The window closed in September

Griswold certified the general election ballot on Sept. 4. State law gives an eligible elector five days after certification to challenge a candidate’s qualification, which put the deadline at Sept. 9.

The same subsection applies Colorado’s frivolous, groundless or vexatious actions statute to these challenges.

The tax bill is dated Oct. 1.

Clerks could begin mailing ballots the next day.

Laugesen acknowledges the deadline and gives six reasons he says it should not bar him, running from the argument that a claim cannot expire before the facts creating it exist, to due process, to the position that a qualification measured on Election Day can be defeated by conduct after certification.

He also pleads an alternative claim under a separate section of the election code, which the petition says carries no five-day filing limit. That claim argues Griswold breached a duty by certifying a candidate who cannot show she meets the residence requirement.

It rests partly on Anderson v. Griswold, the 2023 Colorado Supreme Court decision on Donald Trump’s ballot eligibility. The petition notes it was reversed on other grounds.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal held that states have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment with respect to federal offices. Its reasoning ran wider than that provision. Quoting an earlier term-limits case, the court said powers over the election and qualifications of federal officers must be delegated to the states rather than reserved by them.

The petition does not address Article I, Section 5, which makes each chamber of Congress the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members. The same opinion notes that the House and Senate have used that power to decide whether prospective members could take their seats.

Laugesen himself wrote on Oct. 26 that carpetbagging is generally legal and that states cannot add their own qualifications for Congress. He published that two days before the date on the petition.

What the record does not show

Neither the petition nor the reporting it relies on identifies who changed the designation on the Chevy Chase house, or when.

Maryland sets that status in more than one way. The homestead credit runs on an owner’s one-time application. The state also mails an application to new purchasers once a deed is recorded, and the statute contemplates a buyer indicating on a land-records intake sheet that a property will be their principal residence.

The petition pleads that someone claimed the designation on information and belief, the standard for an allegation a party cannot yet prove.

Killin’s Colorado voter registration is not publicly available, the petition says. State law treats the information on a candidate’s voter registration record as admissible prima facie evidence of compliance with the eligibility section, so that record is the document that would most directly answer what the petition asks.

Killin’s statement of candidacy, signed and filed with the Federal Election Commission on July 15, 2025, carries a Colorado Springs address. It includes a unit number and is the same address her campaign committee uses.

The question came up in the primary

This is not the first time Killin’s residency has been pushed into the race.

In May, the campaign of her primary opponent Joe Reagan sent the Pikes Peak Bulletin a document titled “JK Findings,” built on campaign finance records and making much the same argument about where she lives. Reagan’s statement that week called the house a vacation home in the Broadmoor bought to claim residency.

John Jarrell, chair of the El Paso County Democratic Party, told the Bulletin at the time that the party vets eligibility and that Killin qualified.

“We verify eligibility using a candidate’s voter registration on file with the Colorado Secretary of State,” Jarrell said.

RMV also sought comment on Oct. 29 from the secretary of state’s office, which Laugesen says he notified in writing on Oct. 28.

Ballots had to be in voters’ hands by Oct. 9. The petition asks the court to hold a hearing at the earliest practicable date before Nov. 3, and to rule within 48 hours of its close, which is what the statute requires.

Whether a judge takes it up at all is the first thing to watch.