CO: Independent Commissioner Continues Fight for Ballot Access

In August of last year, Joelle Riddle, a county commissioner in Colorado, switched her party registration from Democrat to independent.  With that she was forced off the ballot under Colorado's discriminatory ballot access laws.  The Durango Herald reports on her ongoing legal challenge to get her name on the November ballot:

La Plata County Commissioner Joelle Riddle switched from the Democratic Party to unaffiliated status, and state Sen. Bruce Whitehead went in the opposite direction - from an unaffiliated nonpolitical career to Democrat - to run in the Nov. 2 general election.  Each simply wants to carry on work already begun.  But it appears Whitehead will have the easier row to hoe . . .
Riddle's pro bono attorney, William Zimsky of Durango, says the deck is stacked against unaffiliated candidates and their supporters . . . Zimsky cites the case of Whitehead, who was appointed in August to fill the 6th Senate district seat vacated by Jim Isgar. Whitehead, who was unaffiliated, joined the Democratic Party on June 30, which means he will have been a Democrat less than a year by the June 15, 2010, deadline to get his name on the Nov. 2 ballot.
But state election statutes allow political parties to make exceptions to the affiliation requirements, Jean Walter, chairwoman of the La Plata County Democratic Party, said Wed-nesday. The Democratic Party's own rules, allowed by state laws, require only that its candidate be affiliated at least a year before the general election.
There's the rub, Zimsky said Wednesday, because the state law doesn't apply equally to all candidates.
“In Colorado, persons seeking to run as unaffiliated candidates face harsher restrictions than those seeking to run under the banner of political party," Zimsky says in asking the U.S. District Court in Denver to deny a petition to dismiss Riddle's lawsuit. “The statutory scheme is unconstitutional as applied because Commissioner Riddle would have been eligible to be placed on the ballot if she had changed her affiliation from Democrat to Republican, Libertarian or Green Party instead of unaffiliated on Aug. 21, 2009."