November 19, 2013 10:03 AM UTC

Reminder: DO NOT Take Legal Advice From Jon Caldara

• 12 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

As the Colorado Independent's Tessa Cheek reports:

Independence Institute President Jon Caldara says news that the attorney general is investigating former El Paso County Clerk staffer Alissa Vander Veen for voter fraud is not really surprising. For months he has been arguing and trying to demonstrate that a new law that put in place same-day registration in Colorado encourages troublemaking at the polls.

Caldara said he doesn’t remember ever speaking to Vander Veen or know anything about her case, but he added that he thinks the state’s Voter Access and Election Modernization Act “basically legalizes voter mischief.”

…Democrats, with the support of most of the state’s county clerks, passed the sweeping law last session, looking to increase voter turn out and up the efficiency of election administration for the digital age. Caldara joined Republican lawmakers in opposing the bill. He said so-called gypsy voters wold now be able to game the system by registering the day of the election wherever they wanted to vote in the state. Critics said the complaint was fear mongering and pointed out that state laws preventing voter fraud had not changed.

It was reported yesterday by the Colorado Independent that former El Paso County Clerk staffer Alissa Vander Veen is being investigated for violating rules for residency to vote in the Senate District 11 recall election in September. Vander Veen in fact used a VA loan to purchase a home in Pueblo last year, and such loans require the purchaser to use the home as their primary residence. Despite that, she reportedly affirmed an SD-11 address and voted in the recall election.

We'll be interested to see the results of that investigation, but for today, it's enough to be amazed by the endless chutzpah on display from another person under investigation for fraudulently voting in the SD-11 recall, the Independence Institute's director Jon Caldara.

Caldara, no stranger to the world of showy political statement, was determined to test the system. He posted a website encouraging “gypsy voting” and, although a longtime resident of Boulder County, he filed a transparently bogus registration in El Paso County and cast a blank ballot in the heated recall election there this summer.

“You know there’s an investigation on me as well,” Caldara said, deadpan. “That’s par for the course when there’s a complaint filed, the DA has to look at it. If the DA is conflicted, then he has to bump it up to the AG’s office… That’s not unusual, not necessarily nefarious.” [Pols emphasis]

Got that? Under investigation for felony vote fraud–"not unusual, not necessarily nefarious."

It is a truly absurd place we've arrived at in Colorado politics today, folks.