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October 26, 2011 04:29 PM UTC

Would Gessler tell Vincent Carroll whether he thinks there's election fraud in Denver?

  • 39 Comments
  • by: Jason Salzman

(Gessler prefers softball, naturally – promoted by Colorado Pols)

Part of the reason Denver Post columnist Vincent Carroll is effective at getting under the skin of liberals is that he’s so good at mixing his opinion with interviews and other types of original reporting.

In my lowly way as a progressive blogger, I try to write like Carroll, with his edge and clear reporting, though he’s better at it (though his opinion is usually wrong, even if his facts are right).

So I read his column.

On Saturday morning, Carroll is very effectively ripping apart the county clerks, and at the end, he’s quoting from his personal interview with Secretary of State Scott Gessler.

For weeks, I’d been trying to ask Gessler–or anyone in his press office–a simple question about whether he thinks there’s fraud in Denver elections, and his office will not comment.

But he’s yapping it up with Carroll.

So I emailed Carroll:

I’m wondering, do you think Gessler or his media people should talk to me, even if I’m progressive, as they do you.

…what seems to bother Gessler’s spokesman the most about me is the fact that I crosspost on ColoradoPols, obviously a left-leaning blog.

I mean, it would be one thing if I were a progressive hatchet man, but I really don’t think I’m harder on the conservatives I interview than you are on the liberals who talk to you.

Carroll replied:

You are right that you are not a left-leaning hatchet man, but that doesn’t mean Gessler is under any obligation to talk to you.  Some people won’t take my calls, too.  Such is life in journalism.

Right.

But you’d think a public official would at least listen to the question, and if it’s a basic one, like whether there’s election fraud in Denver, and if the answer would serve the public interest, he’d respond, whether the questioner were progressive or conservative.

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39 thoughts on “Would Gessler tell Vincent Carroll whether he thinks there’s election fraud in Denver?”

    1. Couple months ago I read a story in the online DP about a guy who was convicted of voter fraud in either Arapahoe or Douglas county (can’t remember which). The guy had voted twice in several different elections.

      He was a registered Republican.

        2. There are safeguards in place to keep this from happening. Either someone was asleep at the wheel in Arapahoe in 2008 AND Adams in 2009, or this guy purposely gave false info every time he moved to intentionally get multiple ballots.

          Sounds like there was a conviction in this matter so the process worked as intended.

      1. The allegation is that there are some cases that have been turned over to Morrissey’s office that have not been followed up on.

        If that is indeed the case, then the DA should be taken to task for it.

        However, given the source, I doubt we have heard the whoel story.

  2. I don’t want anyone to have access to my ballot who could identify how I voted. Mr. Carroll is misrepresenting what Larimer County Clerk & Recorder Scott Doyle said. I’ve spoken with Mr. Doyle about his take on exposing ballots to public records act. What he did in Larimer County was have his staff run a test on whether giving the ballots to the public would expose the identity of individual voters and who they voted for to public scrutiny. His test showed at least 80% of the voters in Larimer County could be identified and who they voted for exposed to public scrutiny.

    The integrity of the secret ballot is what is at stake here, not fraud or any other issue based on sophistry.

    The clerks should stick to their guns.

    3. Did Mr. Doyle explain how this info would be known? I am wondering if there may be a tweak to their processes to prevent such a thing.

      I am a little familiar with Denver’s process from having been a election judge in the past. The process they use would not allow anyone to know such information.

      1. If enough people use electronic voting machines, and they’re linked with electronic poll logs, then the two can be correlated and synched up, revealing far more about voter ID than you think should be possible.  This happens when the DRE units are equipped with roll paper physical recorders, or store their information electronically in insert order.

        Same goes for regular poll logs, since they record voter sign-in order.

        It isn’t so much a problem if you’re using disconnected ballots, unless the ballot numbering system is sloppy.  (E.g. Hart voting systems by default used a single number on both the ballot and the stub.  The numbers ran in order by printing, so looking at the poll log you could reconstruct voter ID matching by ballot # against order of per-ballot-style sign-in.  Also, the stub number is recorded in logs, again in order of sign-in, so stub vs. ballot number could be used.)

        These types of issues are correctable or avoidable when purchasing or configuring voting equipment; alternately, certain voting information could be redacted prior to any CORA or FOIA request response.

          1. Carroll’s piece is horribly slanted, opting to accuse “unaccountable” county clerks of purposefully setting up their voting systems so that a voter to ballot match can be reconstructed.

            Perhaps more accurately, though, what I’ve noticed is that there are very few people who really have a solid grasp on the hows and whys of election security.  The voting machine companies don’t even seem to spend much time on it, and most county clerks are not information security pros.

            E.g. Any DRE with an attached roll printer should automatically fail certification unless the printer shears off individual ballot printouts and throws them into a bin – yet we have many, many such machines here in Colorado, a nasty side-effect of municipalities buying non-paper HAVA mandated equipment followed by the law mandating paper records of all ballots.  Because they preserve the order of ballots cast, they allow people to data-mine for information about the voters who cast them.

            I already mentioned the issue with the Hart paper ballot system, and I’m guessing other voting systems have that problem as well.  At least that’s correctable in the system configuration, though I never managed to convince my county clerk of the issue (and it remained an issue through the 2010 primary before magically being fixed for the general election – probably a firmware update…).

            I do think that county clerks should become much more aware of what they can do to increase ballot information security.  I also think the voting machine companies should be held at least partially accountable for the problems their new machines introduce into election security.  And I think there are things that could be done to remove those cases where one or just a few voters constitute a ballot style due to special district boundaries, such as co-ordination of the drawing of district lines.

            IMHO, in general, ballot information should be available for public inspection, provided data mining won’t reveal an individual voter’s votes.  But I don’t think Carroll is right in how he says it or in the accusations he makes.

      2. In rural counties it is possible that due to the varying ballot styles people could identify specific voters and how they voted.

        I agree with Republican 36, 136%

        1. I could see a rural county with several special districts having difficulty when each combination of special/congressional/legislative districts creates a new ballot style.

          I would imagine there could be some ballot styles with so few people voting on them, their privacy could be in jeopardy.

  3. I wish Gessler would talk with you, but I’m not surprised he won’t. Try to be the grown up about it.

    not a criticism, I enjoy what you write

      1. Day of receipt isn’t counted in his three?

        So if he doesn’t contact me with information on how to inspect by EOD tomorrow, the denial is in the mail? Or should I show up in person to follow up Friday if I hear nada tomorrow?

        1. Just for the hell of it, if I were you, I would contact the law schools at DU and CU.  Ask them if they are doing public service pro bono work with their students and if so, could you apply for some help.

          I think you should show up at the office…confirm in writing whatever you are told….if you could have back up, such as student attorneys or anyone from the Press or even ACLU, it would be good.  

          You have a good start, make a paper trail, Cowgirl.  We have your back.

          1. If no denial appears by next week and I haven’t heard from him, where do I go? To his office to inspect the records since he has not refused? To a regulatory body of some sort?

    2. But I’m having fun. It’s not work at all. It’s choosing how our partisan SoS spends my tax dollars. He likes to spend them disenfranchising likely Democratic voters. I like to learn about the CORA process while making him spend them on dealing with CORA requests instead. This has been quite an education, and the story is not over; whether the next step is a diary or something else (I did see your other comment and it gave me ideas…) he is not shaking me off his back just yet.

        2. I will  restrain myself and swallow all the words I learned as an Army brat to identify dick heads. That colorful display would distract from the issue at hand.

          You see, ArapaGOP, you are exactly what is wrong with the republican party. You think that citizens don’t have rights.

          You think that citizens should wait for an engraved invitation to participate in their own government. You would rather make “nice-nice’ than democracy.

          Progressive Cowgirl is doing exactly what the media should have done weeks ago.  PC is carrying the water for the rest of us.

        3. I’m pleased to attempt to force him to defend the ludicrous conclusions he has drawn on the basis of evidence he refuses to provide, which he has used to justify wasting my tax dollars on the defense of his attempt to disenfranchise military and minority voters.

          I would hope that you are equally proud of my attempt to force accountability in state government spending, as a Republican.

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