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September 04, 2014 11:00 AM UTC

Gessler, Brauchler, Still Can't Make Facts Fit Illegal Voter Narrative

  • 17 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols
Noooooo!!! Oh, nevermind.
Noooooo!!! Oh, nevermind.

As Election Day gets closer and closer, so, too, does the end of Republican Scott Gessler's contentious term as Colorado's Secretary of State. Perhaps one day we will all look back at this period of time and laugh to ourselves in disbelief that Gessler could have actually been in charge of voting in Colorado.

Back when Gessler first took office in January 2011, he told everyone who would listen that Colorado had a massive problem with illegal voters casting illegal ballots. In fact, Gessler testified before Congress that he was aware of at least 16,270 illegal voter registrations in Colorado, including 5,000 who illegally cast a ballot. Those numbers, of course, never held up to even the slightest level of scrutiny. In July 2013, Gessler's office produced a list of 155 people — yes, just 155 — who were suspected of having registered to vote illegally. What happened to the other 16,115 that Gessler boldly proclaimed to Congress as illegal voters? Perhaps someone in the Secretary of State's office just accidentally cut-and-paste the same names 110 times.

Last November, Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler, a very partisan Republican DA, announced that his office had indicted a grand total of 4 (four) people alleged to have been involved in illegally registering to vote. In June, charges were dropped in one of those cases, and yesterday, a judge tossed charges in a second Brauchler case. From CBS4 Denver:

A judge dismissed an election-fraud charge against an Aurora man on Wednesday after prosecutors said they could not prove he was the one who illegally registered himself to vote.

Tadesse G. Degefa, who is not a U.S. citizen, had been charged with procuring false registration for allegedly signing up to vote in 2012.

District Attorney George Brauchler said the secretary of state’s voter registration website does not have safeguards to prevent someone from illegally registering someone else to vote.

According to CBS 4, charges are still pending against one canvasser and one noncitizen. In other words, out of Gessler's original claim of 16,270 cases of illegal voter registration, we may (and only possibly) end up with just two people who may have not even intentionally been involved with illegally registering a voter. And guess how many people look to have actually voted illegally?

At this point, none. As in, zero.

So, Scott Gessler was pretty close in his estimation of voter fraud — give or take 16,270 people.

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17 thoughts on “Gessler, Brauchler, Still Can’t Make Facts Fit Illegal Voter Narrative”

  1. Hapless (Gessler) and clueless (Braugher). Absolutely shameless, and utterly despicable. These two charlatans owe the state of Colorado a lot of money for their failed partisan witch hunts.

    Don't GOTPers ever tire of being publicly humiliated as they expose themselves as inveterate liars, frauds, con artists, grifters and uber-partisan cheats?

    Apparently not.

  2. So then, having Scott Gessler as Colorado's SOS has reduced voter fraud by 99.99988%, give or take, !!! . . .

    . . . it can only get better once we elect Governor Gessler this November!!!

    Gessler 2014 (and beyond)!!!

    2. Because:

      Why settle for the lesser evil?

      and Dio, your observation that Gessler will claim to have reduced voter fraud by 99.99% is probably not far off. He is still making the rounds in Republican circles, claiming that the Secretary of State's office needs to have a Republican in charge because of potential voter fraud.

      You have to give the guy props for sticking to his story, but voters in Colorado will breathe easier when Gessler is safely ensconced back in a cushy law office, or lobbying firm, tweaking laws for Republicans.

      Wayne Williams aims to follow in Scotty's footsteps apparently – Go Joe Neguse!

    2. And never stop addressing a "problem" proved so far to have affected zero election outcomes with methods costing millions and almost certainly suppressing the ability of qualified voters to participate in the democratic process on a scale large enough to change the outcomes of elections. 

      Modster, your chance of having your vote cancelled by a fraudulent vote cast in person are many, many times lower than your chance of getting hit by a bus since people actually do get hit by buses. But I promise to be there to cancel your vote out every time in every election in which we both vote. 

      So what are you going to do? Hire a hit man to protect your vote? Outlaw buses? Because either of those solutions to "problems" would actually make more practical sense than the solutions you support to prevent in person vote fraud.

    4. Moddy, you'll be glad to know that your county clerks are on the case! Even though there has been zero evidence of voter impersonation fraud in Colorado, and only 8 cases in the country in the last 10 years of billions of votes cast, your local County Clerks are piloting a new ballot tracking program.

      Pueblo is one of the counties piloting this program. It's pretty slick – the voter has to sign up, opt in to have his/her ballot tracked. Then, from the time the ballot is put into the US mail or returned to an elections office, the voter can go online to make sure that his/her ballot was received. If the ballot was returned by, say, a fraudulent voter (just in case Jon Caldara or one of Scott Brown's neighbors got up to no good), the voter will be able to see that and say, "Hey! That wasn't me that returned that ballot!"

      County offices are also using ERIC,  which allows election offices to keep voter rolls updated as voters move, die, become eligible to vote, and change their names. ERIC uses data from Homeland Security, the DMV, the Post Office, and other entities.

      So the chances of fraudulent voting are slimmer than ever. But BC is still going to cancel your vote. Or you can look at it like this: You will cancel BC's vote. Or mine. whichever. Happy voting!

    5. You might want to work on making sure all votes cast, including yours, are accurately counted.  I've never heard of a recount that didn't result in a different tally, sometimes even changing who actually won.  So, take your fake outrage over nonexistent voter fraud and direct it to a more pertinent problem.

  4. The Secretary of State's race has not gotten a lot of press, but Coloradoans have a real choice this November.  Wayne Williams will continue the ultra partisan "honey badger" ways, whereas Joe Neguse thinks every eligible voter shoould vote.  Support Joe!

     

  5. I'm sure Mod will say that being rejected at the election booth on election day "could never happen to me", but that's what several former elected officials assumed when they were turned away in states that have recently adopted restrictive voter ID laws. It's what happened to people who served our country long ago and those who have voted in every election since they were able to vote.

    We have more documented cases of of people being denied their right to vote in the past few years from voter ID rejection than we do in a decade of alleged vote fraud. But I guess Moddy's okay with that. Security over liberty, any day.

    1. That reminded me of a story from last year about a Texas judge so I looked it up.

      “What I have used for voter registration and for identification for the last 52 years was not sufficient yesterday when I went to vote,” 117th District Court Judge Sandra Watts said.

      Watts has voted in every election for the last forty-nine years. The name on her driver’s license has remained the same for fifty-two years, and the address on her voter registration card or driver’s license hasn’t changed in more than two decades. So imagine her surprise when she was told by voting officials that she would have to sign a “voters affidavit” affirming she was who she said she was.

      “Someone looked at that and said, ‘Well, they’re not the same,’” Watts said.

      The difference? On the driver’s license, Judge Watts’s maiden name is her middle name. On her voter registration, it’s her actual middle name. That was enough under the new, more strict voter fraud law, to send up a red flag.

      “This is the first time I have ever had a problem voting,” Watts said.

      http://www.thenation.com/blog/176792/texas-voter-id-law-discriminates-against-women-students-and-minorities

      Well just keep the names you use straight you might say?

      One may be tempted to suggest Watts and other women should have known to coordinate their voter registration card with the state mandated name on their driver’s license. However, we’re talking about Texas.  As Watts noted, the state mandated that women use their maiden name as their middle name on their driver’s license in 1964 and the problem with the registration card is a direct result of the new voter ID law.

      http://www.politicususa.com/2013/10/25/texas-voter-id-law-prevents-women-voting-married.html

       

      1. The bright note on that story is that Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis was instrumental in getting the law amended so that they could sign those affidavits. Republicans, including her opponent Greg Abbott, would have left all of those voters – legally bound to have invalid ID – unable to vote at all.

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