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September 30, 2011 03:32 PM UTC

Caplis and Silverman rush Gessler off the air after he alleges election fraud in Denver

  • 20 Comments
  • by: Jason Salzman

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

Under normal circumstances, I’d slam KHOW’s Caplis and Silverman for letting Colorado’s Secretary of State breeze onto their show Wednesday, assert that there’s a “pretty high incidence of fraud” among one type of Denver voters, and then depart without being forced to explain what in the world he was talking about and what evidence he had to back it up.

But maybe Caplis and Silverman have heard Secretary of State Scott Gessler make so many unsubstantiated accusations of election fraud by now that it sounds normal, so normal that they think there’s no need for follow-up questions.

Whatever they were thinking, KHOW talk-show hosts Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman listened in silence Wednesday as Scott Gessler made the startling assertion that “Denver itself admitted” that sending election ballots to inactive voters has resulted in a “pretty high incidence of fraud.”

The issue arose last week when Gessler’s office sued to block Denver from mailing ballots for the Nov. 1 election to voters who haven’t cast a ballot since 2008 and did not respond to a letter asking if they wanted a ballot.

Gessler took the action partially to “reduce the potential for fraud,” according to the lawsuit.

But on the radio, Gessler sharpened his accusation, saying he was fighting fraud itself, not just theoretical fraud.

Gessler said [at the 37 minute point in the podcast]: But Denver itself admitted, there’s a pretty high incidence of fraud in inactive-voters returned ballots. They rejected in their municipal election well over 200. So we know fraud exists. The question is, what’s the extent and what’s the proper balance. The Legislature struck that balance. I’m going to respect it.

Denver has not admitted that there was any fraud resulting from ballots submitted by inactive voters, much less a “pretty high incidence” of it.

“I’m not sure what he [Gessler] is saying is fraud,” Denver Clerk and Recorder Debra Johnson told me. “He’s using the word fraud loosely.”

She said about 200 ballots in the 2011 Denver municipal election were found to have “signature discrepancies,” meaning the voter’s signature on the paper ballot was determined not to match the voter’s signature in Denver’s database. If a signature discrepancy is found, a voter is sent a letter and given eight days to clear up the matter.

“Every one of those is sent to the District Attorney,” Johnson told me. “And none of those has been identified as fraudulent by the DA.”

Johnson pointed out that it’s not just the inactive voters who have signature discrepancies, it’s also the active voters. ‘We pulled our numbers from the last election, and they were the same, in terms of the percentage of ballots returned,” she said.

The history of election fraud in Denver, it turns out, is deadly dull, even to a political junkie. And you’d have to think even Gessler, who seems to get excited about fraud even when it’s not really fraud, would find it dull as well.

The last case of election fraud in Denver that was actually prosecuted occurred in 2005 and involved a single voter, according to Amber McReynolds, Director of Elections for Denver. She added that, in 2009, a circulator of a petition was found to be fraudulently signing names, and turned over to the DA, and in 2010, the state of Arizona asked Denver for information about a person who voted in Denver and also attempted to vote in Arizona.

Gessler’s interview on Caplis and Silverman stands in stark contrast to comments he made Aug. 31, 2010, on KFKA’s Amy Oliver Show.

At the time candidate Gessler was attacking then Colorado Secretary of State Bernie Buesher for allegedly failing to ensure that Colorado complied with a federal law requiring overseas military personnel be sent election ballots 45 days before the 2010 election. In the end, Buescher found a way for Colorado to comply.

Radio-host Oliver laughed it up with Gessler, who said something that Caplis and Silverman should play back to Gessler next time he’s on their show:

Gessler said: “You’re the Secretary of State. What the heck is your job? Your job is to make sure people can vote. That’s one of your jobs!”

On Caplis and Silverman Wed., about a year after his appearance on KFKA, Gessler hadn’t completely forgotten this notion of trying to make sure people can vote.

Asked by Caplis what he thought Denver was trying to accomplish by sending ballots to inactive voters, Gessler said, “I’m guessing they are trying to increase the number of people who vote in the turnout from inactive voters.”

Silverman then asked Gessler why it “isn’t a good thing, if more people vote.”

“It’s good if you don’t have fraud,” he replied.

And since there apparently is no fraud, where does that leave Gessler?

I’m hoping Caplis will ask him next time he’s on the show. Letting him depart with a”keep-up-the-good-work” slap on the back is pretty hard to listen to.

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20 thoughts on “Caplis and Silverman rush Gessler off the air after he alleges election fraud in Denver”

  1. I have been under consideration for a position at the Secretary of State’s off in the elections dept. so I have kept my trap shut about Gessler’s behavior, but I was notified a couple of days ago someone else was hired for the position. I can’t keep quiet any more, and I no longer need to.

    I worked on a contract basis for the Denver Election Division through all of the 2008, 2009, and 2010 elections. I can assure anyone reading this that Denver goes above and beyond to protect from fraud. And how dare the SoS throw around such baseless accusations.

    And lets get our terms straight here! FRAUD is when a person purposely attempt to vote either when they are not eligible or more often than once.

    What Gessler is talking about are signatures of voters that look different from the signature on file. Almost all of these cases have non-fraudulent explanations. For example, I do not always sign my name the same way. My “legal signature”, which I try to remember to use for voting, writing checks, etc is essentially unreadable. I use a slower more deliberate, and (almost) readable signature for signing my books. Yes, I sometimes screw up and use one for the other. That is not fraud, that is me not paying attention (or getting tired after signing dozens of books).

    Does this mean there are no attempts at fraud Denver? Of course not! Any county with a high population will experience the occassional idiot who tries to get away with something. The point is, Denver, and all of the other counties who have to follow the state’s laws, have the protections in place to detect and thwart these attempts BEFORE the perpertrator is able to cast a ballot. I would imagine the number of such attempts are pretty similar between Denver and El Paso Counties which have similar population numbers. But are we ever gonna hear Gessler accuse very Republican El Paso County of allowing fraud? Didn’t think so.

    The fact that this man is using his office so blatantly to sow fabricated mistrust in the election process in heavily Democratic counties should be cause for impeachment! But with a Republican Speaker of the House, that is also unlikely to happen.

    I renew my pledge: if any person or organization raises the money for a recall, I will offer to run that petition drive. I have already devised a strategy to gather the huge number of signatures needed in the very little time allotted to do it.

    If a recall is not done, we are stuck with this behaviour until Jan. 2015!

    1. SOS Gessler is following what has become the Republican’s standard process. First, undermine all of our public institutions with fabricated charges. Make the charges over and over again until the public doubts the integrity of a given public institution and then move in for the kill. The problem with all of this is they have no substitute whether its for elections or social programs or any other public function. Neither Mr. Gessler or other Republicans are conservatives. A true conservative and stateman was defined by Edmund Burke in the late 18th century:

      A disposition  to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.

      Mr. Gessler and those of his ilk are radicals bent on undermining our public institutions. Interpreting state statutes, in ways to limit voter turnout, is a radical concept and one unfit for an elections officer whose position dictates that he or she should do everything they can to increase voter turnout, especially when the very statutes they stand on allows them to do so. Mr. Gessler is bringing shame on his office.    

      1. In 1756 Edmund Burke published his first work: Vindication of Natural Society.

        Curiously enough it has been almost completely ignored in the current Burke revival. This work contrasts sharply with Burke’s other writings, for it is hardly in keeping with the current image of the Father of the New Conservatism. A less conservative work could hardly be imagined; in fact, Burke’s Vindication was perhaps the first modern expression of rationalistic and individualistic anarchism.

        http://mises.org/rothbard/burk…

        2. I’ve read Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution several times and my interpretation of his most famous work is he reviled revolutionary change that upset the social order without a substitute. He wasn’t against change but certainly against radical change without direction.

          The reason I cite Burke is my belief the Republican Party, at its present intellectual base, is tending in the direction Burke denounced. The Republicans construct a past that never existed and through that prism denounce present society and politics and demand a return to that past. Even if it existed, which I don’t believe it did, we are never going back because American society is the most dynamic society in history and is changing constantly. The Republicans want to return to a static ideal that first never existed and second could never be static.  

  2. Just because he is an attorney and the SoS one cannot expect him to use terms in public in a way that actually have meaning.  

    That would be, well fair and even-handed, and that’s not what he was elected to be, apparently.  Personally I think SuperMax is a bit too lenient for this crook and liar.  

        1. I think he’s hanging in to help sell his wife’s children’s book. Her hairspray bill alone must be crushing. On the plus side, her ‘do probably meets all safety helmet requirements. That’s one solid bob. Never seen it move.

          I hear the book is about some big fat elephant. And Glen Beck has a children’s show now. Trying to turn that coming youth demo into Rs to counter the Hispanic demo?

        2. wasn’t the idea, as I recall. It was that Dems were going to use Gingrich’s words against Republican House candidates who voted for the crazy Ryan plan that Gingrich denounced as “right-wing social engineering.”

  3. I believe it would be appropriate for you to criticize Silverman and Caplis…

    I’m hoping Caplis will ask him next time he’s on the show. Letting him depart with a”keep-up-the-good-work” slap on the back is pretty hard to listen to.

    The above is certainly a stinging rebuke.

    See, Jason, Caplis and Silverman are not Democrats; Gessler is NOT a Democrat, therefore, Caplis and Silverman like whatever Gessler does that hurts the Democrats.

    Now, I don’t know what your party affiliation is, Salzman, but I am thinking that you are not a Democrat and not concerned about bias in the media, IMHO,

  4. He’ll say and do anything he thinks he can get away with.

    And at Clear Channel, especially those “legal eagles” Caplis and Silverman, he can get away with practically murder.

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