A pair of fascinating audio clips sent to us today, timely as debate continues on the Colorado Voter Access and Modernized Elections Act, House Bill 1303. The first clip is Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler speaking last January in defense of the SCORE statewide voter registration database. You might recall that last year, the online voter registration interface to SCORE broke down a couple of times–due to capacity issues immediately prior to the registration deadline, and a misconfiguration of a mobile registration portal. Gessler came in for substantial criticism after those failures, so his report back in January was important. According to Gessler, despite these "glitches," the system was an "astronomical success."
The second two clips (all separated by beeps on the audio track) are both of Gessler speaking last Monday in opposition to House Bill 1303. Gessler seems miffed about the criticism he received regarding the trouble with SCORE last October, which he claims to be "proud of"–especially since this is the system to be relied upon even more under House Bill 1303's provisions for voter registration up through Election Day.
But Gessler is between a rock and a hard place–he opposes House Bill 1303, so in the context of his testimony he has no choice but to identify "points of failure" that could be a problem. The same "quarter million people" that amounted to an "astronomical success" last fall could be a disaster now! County clerks offices in chaos! The problems from last fall somehow "compounded" as a result! Gessler concludes by insisting he wasn't given enough funding in this bill to adequately test the system to handle the pressure.
When you put these clips together, the contradiction is painfully obvious. Despite all of Gessler's "testing" before 2012, "glitches" occurred–but the system was still an "astronomical success."
Today, that potential for "glitches" is a dealbreaker? It's nonsense, folks.
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I'm here watching. Repugs are whining so much about this bill, you'd think it was to ban guns again. 🙂
What is ColoradoPols without frequent postings about Gessler? It's like you guys have a crush on him 😉
The big problem with Gessler is not that he's a partisan hack, it's that he's so bad at it. He provides all the negatives like bad press while actually accomplishing almost nothing to the GOP's advantage.
"The big problem with Gessler is not that he's a partisan hack, it's that he's so bad at it."
I would say that that's not a big problem, unless you're a Republican. As it is, that fact has been Colorado's saving grace.
You truly have perfected the "I'm a Republican so I'm a victim" scam Elliot while skating as far away as possible from trying to logically explain how Gessler can hold two diametrically opposite positions at the same time. Gessler's real beef in this matter is that the legislation now knows that they have to bolt down everything in writing otherwise he is going to weasel an interrepretation that benefits his partisan hacks. He is just ticked off that the legislature is spelling out exactly how they want elections to be held so that as many eligible people as possible get to participate. It must terrify you to think that more people will get to vote. Suppressing the vote is one of Republicans last line of defense for their ideological extremisms so it stands to reason that allowing more eligible people to vote will dilute their chances of enacting their radically extremist agenda so people like Gessler have to fight it with every ounce of their partisan fighting spirit. Nice try Elliot but this is not about ColoradoPols. It about you continuing to be a clueless partisan dick.
Wow. You nailed it, Elliot. It's not that Gessler is a duplicitious, corrupt liar…It's that everyone who points that out is just gay. That law school sure did teach you some incisive arguments.
"Duplicitious, corrupt liar" – don't mince words. Why don't you describe the secretary how you really feel about him.
/sarcasm
Can you answer or refute either the allegations lodged by Pols, or the criticisms made by polsters, about Gessler?
You're right, Elliot, my words could have been better chosen…."Duplicitous,corrput liar" is a redundancy, after all. I could have said, "Duplicitous, corrupt intellectual coward", or, "Duplicitous, corrupt idealogue"…whatever you prefer.
Who needs feelings when facts speak for themselves?
Secretary of State Gessler remains under both ethical and criminal investigation for misuse of public funds and he has spent well over $30,000 dollars of taxpayer money on his personal legal defense. In his brief time in office, he has had no fewer than four judges rule that he has overstepped his authority. And…dunk tank.
It's like a sitcom about a mediocre pol trying hard to be successfully corrupt and devious but failing because he's just not very bright.
just another lawyer. There are good lawyers and there are the banal, those who can not progress past their educational luck
Gessler lies again. The Secretary of State's office has been "self-funded" for more than 20 years, thanks to Natalie Meyer. The SOS sets fees in other divisions (corporations, UCC, notary, bingo and the like) to cover the non-revenue generating portions of the office (like elections). Sometimes, the SOS office account has had a surplus. This results in one of two things. The SOS fund is raided by the legislature of its excess funds to add to the general fund or the SOS lowers fees temporarily to get rid of the excess (like it did this January and February by lowering the corporate registration fee from $50 to $1 for those two months). If Gessler needed more money, all he had to do was keep his fee at $50. I know as an attorney I filed four new corporations during that two months. That's $196. If every other of the 30,000 lawyers in Colorado did likewise, that would have been $5.8 M. How much more does he need. What a liar.
He really doesn't know how much more he needs. Still working on travel plans