Douglas County Republicans pull page promising to publish petition signers' names

Why it matters

This matters because 20,000 petition signers in Douglas County were the target of a promise to publish their identifying information, and that page is now down. The page is gone, which is welcome, even if it took a report to get there. Petition signing should not carry public exposure as a consequence, and the removal still leaves the petition itself unnamed.

Page removed after report on petition signers

Douglas County Republicans removed a webpage that promised to publish identifying information about residents who signed a ballot petition the party opposed.

The removal followed reporting by the Colorado Times Recorder. The party's own website carried the page, according to the account, and the page was taken down after that reporting.

The scale was large for a local petition fight. The report put the number of residents named in the promise at 20,000, all people who had signed the petition. The material reviewed does not name the petition itself, so its subject is not stated here.

Petition signers faced having names published

The 20,000 residents at issue had signed a ballot petition, and the removed page promised to publish personal information identifying them, a practice called doxxing.

That promise tied the signers together by one act: signing a petition the Douglas County party opposed. The material reviewed describes a promise, not a publication, and names no signer.

The 20,000 figure is the size of the group described in the report, not a vote total or a count of people whose information was published.

Reporting trail leaves petition details unanswered

The Colorado Times Recorder reported on the page, the Douglas County party then removed it, and the material reviewed does not name the petition or give a separate party explanation for the page.

The Recorder is a progressive outlet founded by Jason Salzman, according to a 2021 recap of the state's media by the Colorado News Collaborative, known as COLab. That background helps readers place the reporting, which the account says came before the removal.

The item also appears in a Muck Rack listing of articles by Erik Maulbetsch, whose Colorado political reporting also appears on Real Vail. What remains unanswered in the material is the petition's subject, the date the page was posted or removed, and whether the party offered any other comment.