Category Archives: Voting and Ballot Issues

UPDATE #2: FOX 31′s Eli Stokols:

Many Coloradans attempting to register to vote in the election that is now exactly four weeks away are having a hard time using the Secretary of State’s website, which is apparently overloaded ahead of Tuesday’s midnight registration deadline.

With hundreds, perhaps thousands of Coloradans receiving an error message, the website, govotecolorado.com, now includes an apology note atop the page and a link to a paper registration form that can be downloaded and filled out.

While Democrats don’t trust Secretary of State Scott Gessler and are worried about anything that appears to impede voter registration efforts, Gessler’s spokesman tells FOX31 Denver that the website and the servers backing it up are simply struggling to keep up with demand.

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UPDATE: A voter records her failed attempt to register:

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Here’s the message you presently see across the top of Go Vote Colorado, the Secretary of State’s official portal for online voter registration and voter information updates:

It’s a polite message acknowledging that the state’s official voter registration website has had intermittent outages for the last several days. We’ve received several reports of the voter registration tool returning an error or simply timing out. We just tested and found it operating–very slowly, though, ten seconds or more per click. It’s worth noting that Secretary of State Scott Gessler has discouraged outside voter registration groups from building their own interfaces to the state’s voter registration system–which may or may not have helped in this case, depending on what part of the system is failing to work correctly.

It’s also worth noting that these “intermittent outages” happened last year.

Near, and on, the deadline for new registrations. Which is today for the 2012 elections.

Our readers can better address this latest question of malice or incompetence.

Full story: GoVoteColorado.com Plagued By Intermittent Outages (Again)

FOX 31′s Eli Stokols:

The day before the deadline to register to vote in the upcoming election, many of Colorado’s county clerks blasted Secretary of State Scott Gessler in a harsh, four-page letter citing a “cumbersome list of issues.”

Gessler, a Republican nicknamed the “Honey Badger” by Democrats convinced he’s using his office to advance a partisan agenda to disenfranchise minorities under the guise of a crackdown on voter fraud, is in the midst of a voter registration drive that he hopes will be the largest in state history.

But among the concerns expressed by the clerks is that software aimed at enabling people to register to vote from their smartphones and tablets didn’t work, and that 800 registrations submitted via mobile applications in September didn’t go through.

AP’s Kristen Wyatt via the Durango Herald:

The clerks also took issue with a new policy for overseas voters. The clerks said that a print-your-own-ballot system for overseas voters was also improperly tested and has led to problems.

“Recent errors and oversights have created a cumbersome list of issues for local officials,” the clerks wrote…

The clerks said they had time to contact overseas voters and correct possible insecure balloting. But they chided Gessler by telling him they prevented a possibly “quite serious” electoral nightmare.

“If any contests are close, these ballots would have been contested and results called into question,” the clerks wrote. [Pols emphasis]

Tim Hoover of the Denver paper reports on several other, mostly technical items that clerks complained to Secretary of State Scott Gessler about in yesterday’s letter–there was the error-riddled voter registration postcards sent to thousands of already-registered voters last month, “confusing” implementation of the new statewide voter database, and other problems.

The letter asks for Gessler to “spend less effort attempting to transfer blame to local officials,” and more time working with clerks to carry out a secure and accessible election.

Left unstated in Hoover’s story but noted by the AP and FOX 31 is the 800-pound gorilla in the room: Gessler’s devotion of his office’s limited time and resources to purge “noncitizen voters” from the rolls. While these technical problems aggregate, fester, and become a major headache for the county clerks, Gessler has been obsessed with purging 141 voters, .0004% of the electorate–who as it turns out appear to be almost entirely legal too.

This is the other problem with putting “the fox in charge of the henhouse.” The Bible calls it “swallowing camels to strain gnats.” Gessler has ignored more important (if mundane) responsibilities, with greater consequences for neglect, to pursue a fruitless partisan witch hunt.

Meanwhile, a criminal investigation into voter registration fraud is underway, related to a company hired by the Republican Party, Strategic Allied Consulting, and a longtime GOP operative with a history of voter registration shenanigans. Yet as we saw in his speech to CPAC last week, Gessler’s only interest is in baselessly attacking Democrats with fictitious partisan allegations–now debunked by the laughable results of Gessler’s own investigation.

Folks, how can any responsible citizen defend this man today?

Full story: Clerks Go Public With Gessler Incompetence Laundry List

(While the fox guards the chickens, real mischief is done.   – promoted by ClubTwitty)



POLS UPDATE: Watch Scott Gessler’s CPAC speech in its entirety:

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The Denver Post ran a good piece yesterday morning, and the Colorado Indpendent followed with a  more expansive article yesterday afteroon, on Secretary of State Scott Gessler’s appearance at the Conservative Political Action Committee’s conference, held in Denver Thursday.

Gessler was on a panel titled, “Stealing Elections: What the Left Doesn’t Want You to Know About Voter Fraud,” and the media outlets reported, among other things, Gessler’s accusation that the “left” doesn’t care about election fraud.

Gessler’s comments, especially when you read his entire speech below, should be seen as yet another warning sign to reporters about his brazen partisanship, which should obviously be a huge concern for all journalists with the election coming.

Gessler came to the podium after a speech by Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote. (The Colorado Independent provided its own transcript of the speech as well.)

Gessler: Thank you, very much.  Let me start off by of course welcoming CPAC back to the great state of Colorado.  Some of us would say, “The Greatest of States” Colorado.  Um, you know, so I was elected back in November of 2010, took office in January of 2011.  And I think most people would agree that when it comes to elections, it should be easy to vote but tough to cheat.  And, you know, I’m focused on both efforts.  But the “tough to cheat” tends to draw a little bit of controversy.  And I think you’re going to hear from some folks who have really great examples of the vulnerabilities and problems we have throughout our country.

But what I was really struck by after taking office is the level of anger and the level of intensity with which the Left opposes efforts to make sure we’ve got clean and accurate voter rolls and honest elections.  And I’ve thought a lot about that -to think about what drives them.  And, so, I guess the topic here is, you know,  ”What the Left Doesn’t Want You to Know”.  That’s hard to answer because they’re just so obvious in their behavior.  Uh, but I think that one of the things that’s going on, is the people who oppose election integrity efforts, they frankly don’t care about vote fraud.  They really don’t care about it.  They may say they do, but they don’t.

And when you argue with them, or when the public debate – and this is sort of how the public debate goes.  The Left will argue there is no vote fraud, there really isn’t any vote fraud.

They’ll say there’s corruption in our ballot initiatives.  They’ll say there’s corruption in campaign finance.  But when it comes to voting in the booths, our hearts are pure and without malice, and ne’er shall a dark thought cross our minds.

That’s their attitude.  And so you show them that there’s fraud and mistake and abuse there, and then they change their argument.  They say, “Well, there’s just a little bit.  You haven’t shown me very much.  It’s just a little bit.”  And so you may show them a few more, and there’s more, and then they say, “Well, it’s not organized.”  As if organization is the hallmark.  And so, sometimes we’ll actually be able to show organization and then they’ll say, “Well, it hasn’t affected an election.  You can’t prove to me that it has affected an election.”  There’s examples where it has affected an election.  And then they’ll argue, “Well, it’s not widespread.”  And of course, for them, widespread is never widespread enough when it comes to vote fraud.  It’s always minimal.  And then, after you pin them down on that argument, they’ll say, “Well, let’s focus on getting people to vote.  Because that’s really what America’s about.”  And the reason why I’ve become so confident that they don’t care about this is, when you look at Colorado, we’ve made efforts to clean our voting rolls.  We’ve also made massive efforts to register people to vote.  Actually, those efforts have outweighed, from a resource standpoint, um, the non-citizen and voter ID issues.  But the Left doesn’t care about that. They’re only focused on denying that vote fraud exists.  It’s unfortunate.  I think the other thing that’s going on is people on the left, to be frank among us and others, are manipulative.  They just manipulate this issue.  And I think – I mean, I think some people are very sincere when they deny vote fraud or – they’re misguided, but sincere.  But I see two ways in which they really manipulate it.  One is, when it comes to illegally registering people to vote.  Voter registration drives don’t suffer the consequences.  They’ll go before people – for example, non-citizens, they don’t care if they are non-citizens.  They’ll register them to vote.  And if that non-citizen registers and then votes, they suffer serious consequences:  criminal prosecution, loss of the ability to ever become a US citizen.  But the voter registration drive doesn’t suffer any of those consequences.  So I think they’re very happy to manipulate people into believing that it’s okay to ignore these laws.  I think the other thing that they are willing to do, is manipulate people to demagogue an issue, to sort of try and rile up anger, or use anger as a tool.  And that’s happened throughout our history.  But to sort of manipulate people to get them angry against a make-believe enemy that doesn’t exist, in an effort to win votes, to demonize, frankly, people who are conservative and believe in limited government.  This is the tool they use, and of course the ultimate card they play is the racism card.  And they’re more than willing to lie to do this.  We’ve done some investigation in some of our voter registration drives, and one person was lying, telling people they were no longer registered to vote.  And when that person was confronted, they got very angry.  They said, “It doesn’t matter what I say, as long as I’m trying to register people to vote and get people mobilized.”  In other words, “It’s okay to demagogue an issue,” this person thought, as long as their end is pure-their – the means justify the ends, [inaudible --in that sense (?)].  And so we’ve seen that repeatedly.  It’s an unfortunate dynamic.  I think the ‘take-away’ from all of this is, the people who oppose election integrity on the left, they’re never going to change their minds.  They really sort of dug their heels in.  But the broad mass of people in America are common sense, and they agree with us.  And so, I think we have to remain steadfast in our efforts, through solid evidence, persuasion, and patience, and ultimately, ultimately we will prevail in this battle. And thank you for being here.  And thank you for all you do.

Full story: Gessler’s speech to conservatives is yet another warning to reporters about his brazen partisanship

A memo to Associated Press employees from Managing Editor for State News, Financial News and Global Training Kristin Gazlay honors Colorado-based AP correspondent Ivan Moreno for his investigative reporting on Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler’s failed campaign to purge, as it turned out, more or less non-existent noncitizen voters:

Denver’s Ivan Moreno started pursuing the issue of voter fraud in Colorado after nearly 4,000 voters received letters from the secretary of state challenging their citizenship and, therefore, their right to cast ballots. He filed an open records request for the 4,000 names but was stymied by the government saying they were part of an ongoing investigation and should not be made public. But he didn’t stop there…

As weeks passed, Moreno was the only reporter checking in daily for progress on the secretary of state’s investigation. The list of potential noncitizens kept getting smaller and smaller, shrinking from 4,000 to 1,400 to just 141 – and Moreno was the first to report that the authenticity of only 141 voters was being challenged.

He kept asking for the identities of those on the list, and finally got the names of 35 people suspected of being noncitizens who had voted in past elections. Moreno called every one he could find, confirming independently that they were citizens. As a result, the Denver Clerk and Recorder’s office, which had seen the many stories Moreno produced on the issue, sent him their list of voters and said the citizenship of every one had been verified. [Pols emphasis]

Ivan Moreno’s reporting culminated in a broad look at efforts by Republican secretaries of state to purge what they’ve insisted were “thousands” of noncitizens casting ballots in U.S. elections. The laughably small numbers of such voters actually found after so much agitation has severely damaged a key Republican talking point, used to justify draconian suppressive “remedies” and motivate conservative voters. The credibility of everyone involved has been hurt.

All it took was a reporter who didn’t stop asking questions.

Full story: AP Honors Ivan Moreno For Gessler Deconstruction

(Yeesh – promoted by Colorado Pols)



Here’s how the Independence Institute’s Jon Caldara introduced Secretary of State Scott Gessler last week when Gessler appeared on Caldara’s Channel 12 TV show:

You know him, you love him, and he rubs so many people the wrong way because you do your job – Scott Gessler.

About what you’d expect, right?

Except in this case it was particularly ironic because during the interview, Gessler blamed County Clerks for not doing their job properly, for being a root cause of mostly bogus voter registration problems that Gessler alleges.

Asked by Caldara, a libertarian, why noncitizens appear on the voting rolls, Gessler basically threw the County Clerks under the bus, and Caldara didn’t bother to ask if Gessler felt any responsibility himself.

“At the Secretary of State’s office you should catch that and not register them,” Caldara said.

Gessler responded by saying, first, that people register improperly because they don’t understand the law.

Then he said that this is the Clerks’ fault, as if Gessler operated on a distant planet form them.

Gessler: It’s the clerks that actually go through those forms and register people to vote–the county clerks, and it secondly shows that there is some slop as far as people not carefully looking at those registration forms and making sure that if someone says, “no” they’re not registered to vote, you know, that person shouldn’t be registered.

Is Gessler saying he could do the clerks job better than the clerks? Caldara didn’t ask.

But it makes you wonder, especially because Gessler said later that we have a “problem” with Colorado election law, whether he’s going to make a play for greater control of state voter registration.

A good question next time Gessler puts his face in front of reporters, which he’s done a few times during his reign.

Full story: Gessler blames County Clerks for alleged voter registration problems

UPDATE: FOX 31′s Eli Stokols connects the dots:

FOX31 Denver has confirmed that the young woman seen registering voters outside a Colorado Springs grocery store in a YouTube video, in which she admits to trying to only register voters who support Mitt Romney, was indeed a contract employee of Sproul’s company.

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NBC News reports:

Election officials in six Florida counties are investigating what appears to be “hundreds” of cases of suspected voter fraud by a GOP consulting firm that has been paid nearly $3 million by the Republican National Committee to register Republican voters in five key battleground states, state officials tell NBC.

But the veteran GOP consultant, Nathan Sproul, who runs the firm, strongly defended his company’s conduct, saying it has rigorous “quality controls” and blamed the alleged fraud on the actions of a few “bad apples,” workers who were hired to register Republican voters for $12 an hour and then tried to “cheat the system.”

The suspected fraud included apparent cases of dead people being registered as Republican voters, said Paul Lux, the supervisor of elections in Okaloosa County and a Republican. He compared the suspected fraud to the alleged acts of ACORN, the liberal activist group that became the center of a national controversy several years ago.

The company in question, Strategic Allied Consulting headed by longtime political operative Nathan Sproul, had a contract this year via the Republican National Committee to register Republican voters in five states–including Colorado. According to NBC News, in most states including Colorado, Sproul’s contract was paid directly by the state party. Allison Sherry of the Denver paper writes today that Colorado GOP chairman Ryan Call has also fired Sproul.

But there’s more to this story. Some of you might remember a scandal that broke in 2004 over the alleged trashing of Democratic ballots by a Republican-funded voter registration outreach company with contracts in Colorado. That company’s name was Sproul & Associates.

Salon, October 2004:

During the past week and a half, several former employees, elections officials and others across the country who’ve had dealings with [Sproul & Associates] have revealed to various local media outlets Sproul’s methods for boosting GOP registration in key swing states. The accounts allege that Sproul’s workers were encouraged to lie, cheat and, according to Eric Russell, a former Sproul employee in Las Vegas who first told his story to a local television station last week, even destroy the registration forms of Democrats who’d registered to vote with Sproul canvassers. Sproul has denied those charges, variously challenging the veracity of its former employees; but taken together, the stories are compelling, and they may provide an early glimpse into the kinds of shady tactics Republicans are using to win at the polls this year…

Back to the present day, the liberal BRAD BLOG closes the circle:

The firm, Strategic Allied Consulting, is the latest creation of Sproul, a longtime, high-level GOP operative whose companies — including Sproul & Associates and Lincoln Strategy Group — have been accused of destroying Democratic voter registration forms and changing information on them in election after election, in state after state, year after year. He was hired for similar operations by Bush/Cheney in ’04, by McCain/Palin in ’08 and by Mitt Romney’s campaign late last year…

The firm is still said to be operating in key battleground states like Virginia, Nevada and Colorado, where a young lady who may have been working for the contractor was caught on a disturbing viral video tape published over the weekend. The young lady, who was hired by “a third-party contractor” retained by the Colorado State Republican Party, as their Communications Director confirmed to The BRAD BLOG on Wednesday, [Pols emphasis] is seen on the tape asking a potential registrant whether she would vote for Obama or Romney before she would allow her to fill out a voter registration form.

To summarize, there are two problems here. Voter registration fraud of this kind, fraudulent registration of fictitious or dead individuals, is often perpetrated by low-level employees who are paid by the registration–not a situation where these fraudulently registered voters are actually likely to vote. It’s more a headache for the clerks than a threat to free and fair elections, not to mention the organization doing the registration drive gets scammed and takes the blame.

Needless to say, though, if Democrats had been anywhere near this situation, Republican Secretaries of State like our own Scott Gessler would be screaming bloody murder like they did with ACORN’s very similar voter registration problems. So that’s a fair point to make.

Much more important in the long run could be the deceptive tactics of Nathan Sproul, who has been repeatedly accused of conducting “registration drives” very similar to the “isolated incident” recorded on tape of the nice girl misrepresenting herself and screening out Obama voters. What if the incident in that video was not so “isolated” after all?

Nothing about the story as reported so far looks good, but something worse may be lurking.

Full story: RNC Vote Fraud: Nathan Sproul Strikes Again?

A coalition of nonprofit organizations including the Interfaith Alliance, Vote Vets Foundation, and the League of Women Voters sent out a press release this morning warning of some 80,000 Colorado voters who have opted for “permanent” vote by mail status, but are now “inactive failed to vote” in the voter registry simply for not voting in the 2010 elections.

Meaning the word “permanent” no longer applies to them.

As a result, thousands of Coloradans who are likely expecting a mail ballot won’t be getting one:

Mail ballots are increasingly popular, with more than 4 in 10 Colorado voters signed up to receive their ballots by mail.  However, Colorado is the only state that declares a voter “inactive” after missing only one election. When a voter is categorized as “inactive,” they are also removed from the “permanent” vote by mail list.

Inactive voters are still eligible to vote and can do so by requesting a ballot or voting in person.

Almost 80,000 Colorado voters who signed up for “permanent vote by mail” are now inactive because they did not vote in the 2010 election. They may be expecting a ballot, but it is not coming. [Pols emphasis]

“Permanent isn’t really permanent. No one sends you a card saying you’re off the permanent vote by mail list. Many veterans and military personnel who were on active duty in 2010 didn’t get the chance to vote. They may be expecting a ballot that will never arrive,” said Garett Reppenhagen of Vets Voice Foundation.

Full release text follows.

The only thing we can add to the rightful concern expressed by these nonprofits is to remind our readers of Senate Bill 12-109–legislation that would have resolved the status of so-called “inactive failed to vote” voters from 2010 by reactivating them, and would have put in place fairer procedures for managing the voter rolls than the present, hotly controversial practice of “inactivating” voters after missing only a single election.

Everybody remembers who killed that bill, right?

The same guy who hopes you didn’t check your voter status on your phone, right?

One of those “if you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention” moments, folks.

Waiting for a Ballot to Arrive? Don’t Count on It!

Check Your Status at www.govotecolorado.com

A group of Colorado nonprofit organizations today launched a campaign to remind Colorado voters that mail ballots do not automatically arrive in their mailboxes in a presidential election.

The Interfaith Alliance, League of Women Voters, CLLARO (Colorado Latino Leadership, Advocacy and Research Organization) and Vets Voice Foundation are teaming up to make sure eligible voters don’t assume there’s a ballot in the mail with their name on it.

“The best advice is to check your registration status. So many elections are conducted through the mail now, but not presidential elections. It’s easy to check if you’re signed up to get a mail ballot at www.govotecolorado.com or at your county clerk’s office,” said Cath Perrone, President of the Colorado League of Women Voters.

“Election Day is the day that everyone’s voice counts equally. Your right to vote is too important – make sure your voice is heard. Check your registration now,” said Olivia Mendoza, executive director of CLLARO.  

Mail ballots are increasingly popular, with more than 4 in 10 Colorado voters signed up to receive their ballots by mail.  However, Colorado is the only state that declares a voter “inactive” after missing only one election. When a voter is categorized as “inactive,” they are also removed from the “permanent” vote by mail list.

Inactive voters are still eligible to vote and can do so by requesting a ballot or voting in person.

Almost 80,000 Colorado voters who signed up for “permanent vote by mail” are now inactive because they did not vote in the 2010 election. They may be expecting a ballot, but it is not coming.

“Permanent isn’t really permanent. No one sends you a card saying you’re off the permanent vote by mail list. Many veterans and military personnel who were on active duty in 2010 didn’t get the chance to vote. They may be expecting a ballot that will never arrive,” said Garett Reppenhagen of Vets Voice Foundation.

“There is immense pride in casting a ballot, especially in a presidential election. No citizen should miss that opportunity to have an impact on our country’s future,” said Jeremy Shaver, executive director of the Interfaith Alliance.

Voters can check their registration status at www.govotecolorado.com, or they can call their county clerk’s office.

Key Dates:

OCTOBER 9

Last day for new voters to register

OCTOBER 15

First day ballots can be mailed

OCTOBER 22

Early voting begins at local vote centers

OCTOBER 30

Last day to request a mail ballot be sent to you

NOVEMBER 2

Last day to request a mail ballot in person

NOVEMBER 6

Election Day

Full story: Attention 80,000 Mail Ballot Voters: “Permanent Isn’t Permanent”

AP reports via 9NEWS:

Colorado’s election chief says many of the nearly 800 people who registered to vote using a mobile device may not be registered because of a website glitch from Sept. 14 to Sept. 24.

Republican Secretary of State Scott Gessler urged those people Wednesday to verify their status and register again if they don’t show up on the system.

The “glitch” in question appears to have resulted in the loss of 779 voter registrations otherwise properly entered into the mobile-enhanced official registration website. Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler’s office is unable to determine who was not properly registered, because apparently no data was captured by the faulty mobile version of this website.

Just an innocent mistake, right? Not by a long shot, folks.

While Gessler has spent weeks fruitlessly in search of “illegal voters” who, as it turns out, exist pretty much exclusively in his imagination, he has allowed a problem in the state’s voter registration system to screw up the registrations of many times the paltry number of voters Gessler ultimately “identified”–and even most of those 141 voters are turning out to be legally registered. Gessler’s office admitted yesterday that testing of recent software updates to the mobile voter registration site was not sufficient, and that is what caused this glitch.

Add it all up, and there’s really only one conclusion.

Scott Gessler fixates on problems that don’t exist, while neglecting basic responsibilities.

Full story: While Scott Gessler Was Busy Witch Hunting…