In a new court brief, leaders of the Colorado General Assembly defend their use during recent legislative sessions of an anonymous online survey to help prioritize bills that impact the state budget.

The conservative Public Trust Institute alleged in a July lawsuit that the “quadratic voting” system violates the Colorado Open Meetings Law and that legislators’ refusal to disclose individual voting records from the system violates the Colorado Open Records Act.

But a brief filed in Denver District Court on Friday by attorney Ed Ramey contends it is neither a secret ballot prohibited by the open meetings law, nor a meeting that must be open to the public as defined by the law. And legislators’ individual “score sheets” from the system are “precisely the information that the quadratic polling exercise does not consider and does not assemble and provide to the legislators.”