El Paso County judge rules vote to oust Dave Williams as Colorado GOP chair was invalid
EL PASO COUNTY, Colo. (KRDO) - Dave Williams is once again officially the leader of the Colorado Republican Party.
An El Paso County district judge ruled Wednesday night that the Aug. 24 meeting to oust Williams as Colorado GOP chair did not meet the party’s criteria for the number of votes needed to remove him as an officer.
This means the vote to remove Williams as chair did not meet the threshold needed to remove him, and the subsequent vote to replace him as chair with Eli Bremer is also invalid since the original vote to remove Williams is invalid.
The issue of removing Williams as chair made its way into a Colorado court following two GOP meetings in Aug., one held by members of the party that wanted to remove Williams on Aug. 24, and another by members who supported him, on Aug. 31.
Williams sued, with hopes a judge would rule that the Aug. 24 meeting where members allegedly voted to remove him did not have the quorum needed to call the meeting and then did not have the votes required to remove him as an officer.
The CRC bylaws require a vote of three-fifths “of the entire membership of the CRC eligible to vote at a meeting called for that purpose.”
At the Aug. 24 meeting, the attendees determined that the threshold was three-fifths of those eligible to vote who appeared at the meeting, instead of three-fifths of the 414 CRC members in total.
The El Paso County District Court Judge who ruled on the case, Eric Bentley determined it was the latter.
All the votes at the Aug. 24 meeting are now considered null, and thus Williams remains as the party chair. Hope Scheppelman is also still vice chair and Anna Ferguson is still secretary.
In response to the ruling, Eli Bremmer said, “We are surprised and taken aback by the timing and decision from Judge Bentley. We strongly disagree with the decision. We believe we had a strong position & understanding of the bylaws. We had multiple attorneys agree with our position. At this time we are still working to determine our next steps.”
A statement from Dave Williams, as well as the full ruling, can be found here.
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