April 22, 2013 02:47 PM UTC

NAACP Condemns Anti-Election Bill Mailers

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• by: Colorado Pols

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is out with a statement this afternoon endorsing Colorado House Bill 1303, the Voter Access and Modernized Elections Act being debated now at the state capitol–and condemning a mailer sent this past weekend attacking county clerks who support the bill. That attack mailer, as we discussed this weekend, appears to have been altered to remove African-American faces from a photo of a crowd of voters in line to vote.

The NAACP Colorado Montana Wyoming State Area Conference today endorsed a bill that will expand options for voters, modernize our elections and save money for counties around our state.

The NAACP State Conference also expressed serious concern regarding Secretary of State Scott Gessler's close ties to a group that sent postcards to voters over the weekend in two western slope counties. Those postcard contained images in which the faces of African-American voters had been digitally removed and replaced with the faces of White voters… [Pols emphasis]

"The NAACP State Conference stands with the Colorado County Clerks Association, AARP CO, the League of Women Voters, Colorado Progressive Coalition and many other voters' rights and civil rights organizations in endorsing this legislation.

On a related matter, the NAACP State Conference is seriously concerned about an anonymous group, reported to have close ties the Secretary of State, which sent out fliers in La Plata County and Mesa County, criticizing their clerks support of the bill. The information was not only wrong, there is evidence that the faces of African-American voters were intentionally digitally removed from the picture.

The media should join the NAACP State Conference and others in questioning the Secretary of State about this apparent attempt to change the very face of Colorado in ways that lack inclusion and lack truth. Whoever did this should be ashamed. What message does this send to people of color in Colorado — and all of us — about our elections system?

The media must call on Gessler to reveal his ties, denounce this outrageous negative, misleading, exclusionary and divisive effort — or forfeit his ability to remain our Secretary of State with any credibility." [Pols emphasis]