June 23, 2010 12:39 AM UTC

Lawsuit Against Norton May Have Merit

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• by: MountainDem

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

I posted a diary last week of a complaint against Jane Norton by a Tom Bjorklund and the supposed problems with her petitions.

http://www.coloradopols.com/di…

Today I read in the Grand Junction Sentinel a little more about the complaint and wondered if Josh Penry had a valid point about Bjorklund wasting tax dollars to file a frivilous lawsuit against Jane. http://www.gjsentinel.com/news…

So I submitted an email to Mr. Bjorklund to get his story and was pleasantly surprised to get a reply from him.

He said that I was free to share this info with anyone I wanted, so here you go.

Here is my email to Tom Bjorklund on his companies contact form http://www.tacticaldatasolutio…

Mr. Bjorklund,

I read the Sentinel article today about your lawsuit against Norton.  Why are you hiding your case by refusing to talk to the media?

And while Penry sounds absurd, he has a point that you may be wasting taxpayer dollars by trying to use the courts to defeat Jane.  

It’s a fair question, do you have a legitimate case?

Thanks,

Mountain Dem

This was his response

Subject: Your inquiry

Mountan Dem:

Absolutely, Jane Norton’s petitions will be clearly shown to be far short of the sufficient 1500 in not just one Congressional district, but insufficient in 6 out of 7, maybe even all seven.  The data and the scanned petition sections don’t lie.

The suit is against Buescher in his official capacity, not Norton, because that is how the challenge process works.  

And, I am not hiding anything.  You are the first to even email me about the case.  Not even a single reporter has called, let alone our infamous Gary Harmon.  I am happy to relay and show the facts to you if you will do an honest job of presenting them.

My company, Tactical Data Solutions was given 5 days in which to scan 1881 sections and over 5186 pages.  When we ran our data search functions we quickly found problems all over the place.  It was as if Jane Norton’s campaign bombarded the SOS with so many invalid signatures and circulators in an attempt to overwhelm the staff with the hope that enough bad data would get by.

We found thousands of accepted signatures by the same illegal circulators who the SOS office had already rejected.  They mistakenly accepted circulators that the same office had rejected in other sections of the petition.

The SOS office must have been overwhelmed with a mass of sloppy petitions that many of the invalid circulators slipped through (even though the exact same circulators had been rejected on other sections).

Is this a waste of taxpayer money?  Hardly, I’m standing up for the taxpayers that Jane Norton’s campaign is trying to fool with their invalid circulators and bad signatures.  

Josh Penry is being evasive about the process they used to gather signatures.  I have verified lots of petitions over the years and I have never seen such a sloppy job on such a large scale.  I calculated that Norton’s petition process cost the taxpayers over $200,000 in SOS staff time alone to weed through as many as they could.  I am sure a quick call to the SOS office would give you the accurate amount that Norton’s sloppy petitions cost Colorado Taxpayers.

The data we reviewed showed the lions share of signatures were collected at the last moment by Norton’s out of state circulators.  That is when dozens of paid circulators descended on Colorado to come to Jane’s rescue.  Many of their addresses are listed as motels, trailer parks and temporary housing.  They blitzed the state in an attempt to qualify by the deadline.

The problem, besides not having enough in-state support to get on the ballot, was that most of Norton’s professionals were not legally registered to vote as R’s so they could circulate petitions.  

Therefore all of their petitions should have been rejected, just like so many of the ones the SOS caught.  TDS caught them all.

We even have evidence of a foreign immigrant circulator who we believe was able to sneak some signatures past.  That is just the tip of the iceberg.

I’ve nothing to hide.  You’re welcome to share this information with anyone you wish.

Jane Norton’s thugs may try to defame me and the work I did to expose their poor attempt at getting on the ballot, but I am looking forward to having my day in court to let the judge rule on the facts.

Regards,

Tom Bjorklund

Sounds like they may have a real case