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September 18, 2013 03:08 PM UTC
35 Comments
The real shame is that the ethics commission couldn't refer charges. Then maybe Gessler and Caldara could be cellmates.
There will be no charges. Caldara was educating the public about a threat caused by a bad Democrat law.
"prove" fraud by committing fraud. Yeah, that's the ticket.
'a bad Democrat law'? Good lord, can you be more illiterate?
I respectfully disagree with you. Unless you're the El Paso DA or the Attorney General you don't know whether charges will be filed. Neither do I.
As far as "Caldara was educating the public about a threat caused by a bad Democrat law" what is your evidence it is a bad law. From the news stories Mr. Caldara thinks same day registration is the bad part of the new eleciton law passed in 2013. And yet, all, repeat all, of the evidence shows that same day registration does not increase vote fraud one iota. Six states have decades of experience with same day registration statutes including Idaho (since 1994), Maine (since 1973), Minnesota (since 1974), New Hampshire (since 1996), Wisconsin (since 1975) and Wyoming (since 1994). None of those states has reported vote fraud because of same day registration.
Two other states have nearly a decade of experience with same day registration, including Iowa (since 2007) and Montana (since 2005). Again those states have not reported any vote fraud because of same day registration.
Four other states recently enacted same day registration statutes, including California (in 2012, goes into affect when SOS establishes statewide voter database), Connecticut (in 2012), District of Columbia (in 2010) and Colorado (in 2013). Again none of those states has reported any vote fraud because of same day registration, except in the case of Colorado when Mr. Caldara self reported his own vote fraud.
Maryland enacted a same day registration statute but it doesn't become effective until the 2016 election cycle.
North Carolina enacted a similiar statute in 2007 that allowed voters to register between 19 days before the election to 3 days before the election. Not quite same day registration but close. The Republican dominated legislature repealed the statute in 2013 claiming it allowed vote fraud even though they couldn't identify any caused by that statute.
For you or Mr. Caldara to claim this is "a bad Democrat law" is refuted by the historical evidence. There simply isn't any evidence same day registration results in vote fraud.
As I wrote last Sunday here at Pols, do you realize how silly you sound when you make these allegations about same day registration. Voters have lives of their own. They have jobs, families, and all the cares and joys of everyday life. They are not remotely interested in driving to another part of the state and voting in elections that they don't know anything about, not even the candidates names. There is no incentive for them to do so. It is silly, even from a theoretical point of view, to suggest otherwise.
Finally, the idea that Mr. Caldara was alerting the public to a problem is nonsense. Even under the old registration laws, someone could drive to another part of the state register to vote 30 days before the election and vote even if they had no intention of and didn't live in that town or county. In other words, if someone wanted to commit vote fraud they could do so under the previous law too. No one did for the reasons stated above. Mr. Caldara isn't alerting the public to anything but a red herring.
Please cite to the evidence supporting your position.
All th emore reason Caldara should want to be prosecuted.
The point y'all seem to be making is this law makes it too easy to commit fraud.
That point is not proved unless Caldara committed fraud. Did he?
So without his being prosecuted and convicted…nothing has been proven. In order to prove his point, he must be convicted and do time in the Big House…nicht wahr?
Look – I did not invent the DH and I do not like it. But I understand it – one guy in the lineup does not have to bat.
If the registration law makes it easier to commit fraud, which is Caldara/Gessler/etc;s claim, and Caldara was just trying to prove that, then he only proved that if he committed fraud.
If Caldara did follow the new law,but did not commit fraud, his action does not prove the claim. If, however, his action was both adherent to the new law and fraudulent – he needs the fraud to be proved. He should want the fraud to be proved, quod erat demonstrandum.
BlueCat highlights the more ridulous twisting in GOTP illogic below. Laws that inconvenience anyone are pointless because criminals do not follow the law anyway. Laws that prevent mythical crimes are not only useful they are necessary because the potential crime is so heinious.
Another way of looking at it. (Forgive some loquation – it is once again time for Fall baseball and while the Yankees have a glimmer, fans of the game from the north side of Chicago are getting behind the Dodgers or A's. It's just not right.) There were segregation laws in America. There were anti-segregation, pro integration demonstrations that resulted in arrests. If no one was arrested for integrating, then there was no case to fight in court.
In one large city, the segregation law was oddly phrased such that if there was no actual integrating, ie. the people seated at the lunch counter at any one moment were all the same race there was no cause to arrest anyone (unless that large American city had a police department that had a knack for inventing outsanding charges (it did)).
So at first the lunch counter demonstrations were ineefective at getting protestors arrested, at least for integrating. Later the protestors learned to include at least one other race, in fact they became skilled at staging the events so that an arrest almost had to be made. (This was back when – and everyone in the city knew the blacks never should have been allowed above 110th st, or 55th but were certainly not going to be allowed above 22nd.).
The point being if an action in protest of a law neither breaks the law nor illustrates the injustice or folly of the law – then the action is just sitting at a lunch counter waiting for the beat cop to invent an outstanding charge. In this case, the beat cop is too busy msu to try and run for another gov't job. And while I look forward to him vacating his current job (when exactly does that happen?) I have less confidence that the so called challengers have a chance since no one i know has ever heard of either of them.
I was attempting to make three points. First same day registration has not caused vote fraud to increase any where it has been enacted. All the evidence over the last four decades is to the contrary. Therefore, Mr. Caldara's and Mr. Gessler's statements that it will are baseless.
Second, regardless of the election law system a state has enacted, if someone wants to they can commit vote fraud. There is nothing about same day registration that promotes vote fraud.
Third, Mr. Caldara intentionally violated the election laws. So what. Anyone can do that whether same day registration is a part of the election code or not. He proved nothing.
When righties are for a law than, the possibility that something could occur justifies it, even if they can't prove that it's occurring. So when it comes to voter suppression….I mean preventing voter fraud…. with no evidence that any fraud has actually occurred, the justification is that draconian law to prevent it is absolutely necessary as long as fraud is theoretically possible. Of course practically anything, no matter how unlikely, is theoretically possible. In that spirit we should contemplate laws to prevent hunting unicorns for their magical horns.
When they are against a law they claim that laws, such as modest gun control regulations aimed at mitigating a very real, pervasive and well documented problem, are pointless since criminals don't obey laws anyway. In that spirit all laws are clearly a waste of time.
Don't complain that this dual view makes no sense. We all know that making sense, like objective realty, has a notorious liberal bias so taking that into consideration would be commie and un-American.
oops…."then". I'm avoiding editing options to cut down on time consumed by all the copying and pasting and strange text screw ups though I must say, ColPols the blue "remove format" thing you suggested works a like a charm. Haven't had those strange changes in spacing since and it requires no techiness at all.
Agree w/ Repub and it's N3B who is mistaken.
Maybe if I ever had a chance to introduce you to my ex-ranger friendand he could teach you about really concealed weapons you'd learn something although I sometimes doubt the capacity on your part.I note that,as usual. there's not a single shred of corroboration for any of your assertions, but that's so typically wingnut we shouldn't have expected anything different.
So Gessler is saying election fraud is determined by how you mark your ballot? Vote one way, it is fraud, but mark it (or in this case, not mark it) another way, it is not fraud? In some countries you can get imprisoned for how you mark your ballot. That's essentially what Gessler is advocating here.
Folks (and dear SOS), Caldara cast a ballot. Once cast, his ballot can not be identified from any other ballot cast. It is casting the ballot that is the illegal act, not how he did or did not mark it, and leaving it blank has no relevance here. It is astounding that Gessler is making that argument.
You've said this a couple times, and you're probably right as a legal technicality. But it's not at all persuasive as a moral argument. Voter fraud is a felony primarily because it's not fair for people who aren't legal voters to affect the outcome of an election. Caldera's blank ballot did not affect the outcome of the election. Of course that's relevant! Your appeal to authoritarian regimes is really over the top, and entirely pointless in this context.
I actually do think Caldara should be prosecuted. He intentionally disrupted the election and spread doubt about the validity of its results. His actions publicly encouraged others to commit a crime. These things matter, and while they are not the main purpose of our law, they do need to be addressed. But let's not be ridiculous; what Caldara did was absolutely not on the same moral level as someone casting a fraudulent vote for Bernie Herpin, and if Caldara doesn't face those charges because he left his ballot blank, of course it isn't the same thing as a totalitarian government arresting someone for voting the wrong way.
(I'm assuming here that it was verified that he did leave the ballot blank, presumably because he almost surely chose to allow people to witness him voting. If there isn't documented evidence that his ballot really was blank, of course that's a whole different question.)
How do you prove as a legal matter that he did not mark his ballot. (Don't get me wrong–I believe he did not mark it.) But is "showing it" to someone else proof that it wasn't marked? Will that hold up in court? Can 100 people pull that stunt with the cameras rolling and it's ok? That, of course, gets to your point about disrupting the election, but still isn't it an important principle that how you mark your ballot has no relevance to the legality of the ballot? If you lose that principle, it is losing more than a "moral argument."
No, I don't think that's an important principle at all. Neither does anyone else whose interest in voter fraud is mainly motivated by people trying to unfairly influence the outcome of the election.
It would really be far more persuasive to make the reasonable case that Caldara's actions were irresponsible, arrogant, and dangerous. Not that procedurally we should constrain ourselves to judge him as if he'd done something far worse, based on an abstract principle.
Law shmaw. The law means what I want it to mean.
It's all "technicality".
How does he prove he cast a blank? Photo before putting it in the machine? Easily remedied by adding a vote after the photo. Picture of the DRE screen? Remedied by changing the vote before finalizing. Video? Maybe, but easily faked. And is taking a photo or video of your ballot legal in this state?
(Having a photo record of your vote is considered a security lapse in secret balloting. If you can show your vote definitively to someone after you leave the poll, then someone can pay you off for your vote. This is the main drawback to mail-in balloting as well – your vote is not guaranteed to be secret and free of influence.)
Did anyone seriously expect the partisan hack/crook's response to be any different? Gessler proved long ago that he not only has no integrity but doesn't even understand the concept.
SOS Gessler is a political opportunist, and Caldara is a political hack … so these political stunts should be of no surprise to anyone. We as a state, and indeed as a nation, have made it extremely easy and convenient to vote. Therefore, some voter fraud is to be expected, though at the same time unacceptable. As surely we all know, Democrats benefit disproportionately from voter fraud, and will continue to pass legislation to make voter registration "more convenient" … it's part of the power game.
actually Hawkeye, every instance of vote fraud discovered in CO has involved only Rs
Define "some' . So far Gessler has never been able to demonstrate "any". You can't, just as Gessler can't, provide a shred of evidence that whatever amount of the voter fraud you claim exists, if it exists, benefits Democrats disproportionately or at all. You can't offer one single documented statistic.
To claim otherwise is simply a blatant lie. It's very simple. You aren't mistaken. You aren't expressing an opinion. You are stating as fact that for which you have no proof . You are making accusations for which you have no proof. You have no credibility. You are liars.
There have in fact been a couple of cases of vote fraud detected in the state; IIRC they were all Republicans voting in two states.
As I write below, it is certainly possible for someone to commit vote fraud in this country – it always has been. In fact, it's pretty darned hard to prevent it. What you can do is catch it and deal with it. The threat of serious consequences (along with the generally accepted principle that voting is a sacred trust of sorts) keeps it mighty rare. And catching vote fraud within the state is something that is actually easier to do under the new law because of its statewide reporting requirements.
I remember that. Wasn't it a couple of registered Rs who had moved out of state, were registered in both and attempted to vote here as well? As you say though, those were detected.
There is zero evidence that 1) fraud has changed the result of a Colorado election or 2) that Democrats have or would benefit most from any successful voter fraud attempts.
and the other R who voted in 2 different counties
As I recall, a 60's something Republican white guy. And photo ID and proof of citizenship would not have prevented that. And that, of course, was under the old registration deadlines. The new election law, with every county using the common database, would have prevented that extremely rare case of voter fraud.
SOS Gessler did uncover some foreign nationals with legal residency who voted, claiming they were unaware of pertinent voting restrictions. It turned out they were not qualified to vote.
that has NOT been proven. TRUE: there were some inadvertently registered when they got driver's licenses. Most likely the error was on the part of county clerk staff members
When that list of those who were registered when they got their driver's license's was checked it was found that, as you say, clerk error and misunderstanding due to language issues was largely responsible for those wrongly listed and who didn't even know they were registered to vote and never attempted to vote. Also, most of Gessler's supposed registered to vote non-citizens had become citizens by the time they registered. The data he used showing they weren't citizens was simply out of date.
To date, Gessler has not been able to substantiate any fraudulent voting on the part of non-citizens.
There is no absolute guarantee against vote fraud. Caldera committed it, following all of the same requirements that would have been made of him under the previous law. His rent payment to his conspiring Republican buddy probably served as the supporting documentation. He could have presented the same documentation earlier in the campaign and been perfectly legal to register under the old time frame.
What makes Caldera's action vote fraud and perjury isn't the ability under election law to say you live in a district – it's that he lied under oath about his permanent residence in order to obtain a ballot. That's true without regard to timing or documentation; even when voting was restricted landowners, you could only vote in one place.
My question in this whole charade is: why did DA Mays refer this to the AG? It's Mays' job to prosecute this kind of stuff, and his failure to do so on such an obvious case shows a lack of a certain quality required in a DA.
It's not like this is a tough call. Caldera said he was on a week-to-week lease in the Springs; he used that lease to register to vote under penalty of perjury; he proved that he voted in the election under that false affidavit; he pretty much said he did it so he could prove the law was weak; he's since said he isn't staying in the Springs at all (not that anyone doubted him given the terms of the lease of his friend's bedroom or the location of his children…). In addition, from the sounds of his statements about his lease, he's probably up for conspiracy and so is his buddy.
How is it that a DA can't make this stick?
Just giving the man the benefit of doubt. Maybe he felt pursuing this might be considered a conflict of interest.
I rarely agree with AG Suthers, but he does operate with integrity. I hope the AG's office follows through and does the right thing here.
Well, yeah – it might have been a conflict of interest if he felt he couldn't even pursue the charge, which seems to have happened. I suppose, giving him the benefit of the doubt, he at least turned it over to AG Suthers.
If Suthers fails to follow up, we can hope that Caldera votes in Boulder come November; perhaps DA Garnett might be interested in taking up the charge…
From Gessler's reaction, you've almost got to wonder if Caldara and Gessler talked about the stunt beforehand.