U.S. District Court Judge Christine Arguello shouldn’t have the last word on whether Colorado voters have a right to expect their ballots will be anonymous. It seems fairly clear to us that the state constitution protects such a right.

Arguello last week dismissed a lawsuit seeking to stop counties from printing ballots with identifying bar codes, saying she didn’t have jurisdiction and suggesting there is no right to a secret ballot. The lawsuit by Citizen Center insisted that such a right is protected by both federal and state constitutions.

We argued here last month in response to the lawsuit that it was too late this year to expect county clerks to revamp their ballot styles and counting protocols without risking Election Day confusion. We also said clerks could adopt short-term procedures to lessen the risk that some ballots might be traceable to voters.

Nevertheless, we never doubted that ballots should be anonymous and that the state constitution affirms that expectation when it says “no ballots shall be marked in any way whereby the ballot can be identified as the ballot of the person casting it.”

If some counties have been marking ballots in ways that allow them to be traced to voters — and they have — that’s clearly got to stop.

It’s one thing to argue, as the judge did, that plaintiffs failed to show any “actual or imminent” harm by the inclusion of bar codes on ballots. The most disturbing part of Arguello’s ruling is that she seemed to embrace the clerks’ argument that the constitutional guarantee that ballots can’t be traced applies to members of the public but not to election officials.

In support of their thesis, the clerks point to another line in the constitution requiring election officers to “be sworn or affirmed not to inquire or disclose how any elector shall have voted.” Why would they need such an oath, the clerks argue, unless they are expected to “have access to identifiable voted ballots”?

We think the answer is that officials sometimes inadvertently learn how someone voted — perhaps because of how a voter marked the ballot, for example. But inadvertently learning how someone voted is a far cry from presiding over a system that allows an official to trace people’s ballots at will. Is it really so difficult to understand why no government official should hold such power?

We hope the Citizen Center appeals the case or takes its arguments to a state court, where they might have a better shot at success.