Tipping the Scales -- Up to 10,000 Registrations Deemed Incomplete in Colorado

The crucial swing state of Colorado is the latest state in which some voters might not be able to cast a ballot because of a technical mistake they made when registering to vote. Colorado's Secretary of State Mike Coffman, the state's top election official and a Republican, has deemed over 6,000 voter registration forms incomplete. Steve Fenburg of New Era Colorado estimates that there may be as many as 10,000.

Adrian Herrera is a 25-year-old art major who was excited to vote in the upcoming presidential election.

"Basically I registered to vote when I started to work for the SEIU and I was told to put the last four digits of my Social Security Number inside the identification box ...I thought everything was good until I was told my registration was not valid," said Herrera.

Herrera is one of the estimated 10,000 people whose registration forms were deemed incomplete and therefore invalid because they used their Social Security Numbers as identification yet didn't check a box to indicate they don't have a Colorado driver's license or state ID number.

Progressive groups want Coffman to process the registration forms.

Rich Coolidge, a media spokesperson for the Secretary of State's office, says there are no plans to do so.

"At this point our office won't be able to do that. The county clerks are not able to do that because the law is the law and our office and the county clerks have to abide to state and federal law."

Coolidge added that the county clerks are in the process of notifying voters. Voters who are unaware of the contested status of their registration can still cast a provisional ballot at the polls.

"The secretary is encouraging everyone to show up if they aren't registered and they didn't get this incomplete status corrected, they can still [cast] a provisional ballot. I know there are some myths that the provisional ballots are not counted. That is just not the case...the traditional ballots are verified...and then counted."

Donna Davis, Project Director of the African-American Voter Registration and Information Project says "it is difficult for new voters since it requires the voter to present him or herself at the county clerk's office after the election to file paperwork and prove they are the person on the ballot. Provisional ballots are usually not counted until a week after the election and often are subject to challenges. Also of note is that of the almost 2 million provisional ballots that were cast in 2004, a little more than a million were actually deemed valid."

Dusti Gurule, an organizer for the nonprofit group Latina Initiative, said, "The provisional ballot process is not just another form of the ballot... There is a process of verification that [takes place]...That's a whole other step for someone who does not have to time to drop their ballot off...it's not as easy as they say it is."

To further complicate the issue, voter registration groups say that the representatives from the Secretary of State's office who trained them to register voters did not inform them to advise their canvassers to be sure to check the box in question.

Steve Fenburg helped register voters for the nonprofit group New Era Colorado.

"The issue of the check boxes was never raised and in some of these trainings was never even discussed. In the [training] I was in they actually told to us that [the voter] can use either and if they have a driver's license not to check the box."

The Secretary of State's office denies this.

"Our staff was very clear with the laws and the people who did the training have assured [us] that this was part of the training," said Coolidge.

The latest CNN Poll of Polls shows Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama leading his Republican rival John McCain by seven points in Colorado, a crucial swing state. In a close race 10,000 popular votes out of 100,000 people newly registered in Colorado can make the difference when it comes to the Electoral College which, in the end, determines the outcome of the presidential race.

Gurule says the people most affected by the disqualified registration forms are mostly first-time voters who tend to be college students and minorities.

"In the communities where we do our work, primarily low income [areas with] people of color, there is a lot of energy regarding this election so a lot more people are wanting to register and get engaged and get involved," she said. "By deductive reasoning, I guess you can assume this is going to disproportionally impact some of these folks who are not traditionally involved in politics."

Davis says that the Secretary of State's decision not to process the contested registration forms is a violation of federal election law.

"It is a violation of federal law, specifically, a direct violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1971. ..which says no person acting under the color of law shall deny the right of any person to vote in an election because of an error or omission on any record or paper relation to any application, registration or other act requisite to voting, if such error or omission is not material in determining whether a person is qualified under State law to vote in an election... refusing to allow the registration of these voters without further process is a direct violation of their rights. The eligibility of these voters is not challenged; they simply made an immaterial omission in neglecting to check a box."

Colorado's governor, Democrat Bill Ritter, sent a letter to the Secretary of State's office last week calling for a timely resolution of the matter.

"The law [states] that the [Secretary of State] has the ability to cure the problem until election day and we're finding ways to utilize communication devices to make sure people know that...We are really trying to work with the Secretary of State to [fix the situation]. I do think they understand that they were mistaken and have [made] some efforts to cure it. If that means that I keep talking about it [on] the airwaves, that's what it means." Ritter said.

A week before the election, Secretary of State Coffman has stood firm in his refusal not to process the contested ballots. New Era Colorado has posted the Secretary of State's list of incomplete registrations on their website. Whether the estimated 10,000 people who were affected will be able to vote by election day remains to be seen.

Comments

[ThePublicRecord]

http://www.pubrecord.org/politics/436-new-gop-ad-accuses-democrats-of-trying-to-steal-ohio-election.html

New GOP Ad Accuses Democrats of Trying to 'Steal' Ohio Election

The Ohio Republican Party launched a new statewide ad Tuesday claiming Democrats are trying to “steal the election in Ohio” by allowing hundreds of thousands of people to vote illegally, the latest effort by GOP operatives in the battleground state to challenge the eligibility of newly registered voters, many of who are expected to vote for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

“As Election Day approaches, consider this: could Ohio’s election be stolen?” a woman says in the 60-second spot. “Hundreds of thousands of new voter registrations are questionable. Many may be fraudulent. Yet [Ohio] Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is concealing the evidence.”

[MIa08]

A decision has been made in the voter registration lawsuit - the dreaded provisional ballot will be used, BUT "with special protections."

http://www­.9news.com­/news/arti­cle.aspx?s­toryid=102­824&catid=­339

Let's just hope these "special protections" aren't just a means to signal these ballots out for Coffman to later dispose of.

[opticsopen]

What a crock. Bush has got a tap on everyones phone and they can't verify these voters! Whomever is in charge of this shouldn't be!

[peterhowitt]

COFFMAN is this year's HARRIS.

A criminal and a liar. CHALLENGE HIM AT EVERY TURN

What difference does it make if people ticked a box saying if they had a DL or not? Did you get the information you required with their Social Security number?

YES YOU DID. So think of another less transparent way of sucking up to your bosses Bush and McCain by stealing the election for them

L O W L I F E

[SENATORCALLENBOWE]

LET THE LAWSUITS BEGIN :)

[MamaBird62]

What a stupidly designed registration form. If you put your SSN number in, you have answered the question; the "I don't have a DL" box to check is redundant and adds nothing to the information provided by the registrant. Clearly a voting rights violation to deny registration based on the missing check mark.
Is there time to get this one to the courts before election day?

[j0n0]

You all are too funny! Was it not Obama who employed similar "Tactics" in Chicago when running for the State Senate?

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/29/obamas.first.campaign/index.html

....In his first race for office, seeking a state Senate seat on Chicago's gritty South Side in 1996, Obama effectively used election rules to eliminate his Democratic competition.

As a community organizer, he had helped register thousands of voters. But when it came time to run for office, he employed Chicago rules to invalidate the voting petition signatures of three of his challengers.

The move denied each of them, including incumbent Alice Palmer, a longtime Chicago activist, a place on the ballot. It cleared the way for Obama to run unopposed on the Democratic ticket in a heavily Democrat district....Snip

Ah yes, Kool-aid drinkers, even Obama has disenfranchised voters. Now, I am not slamming Obama for such a tactic of disenfranchising the voters and petitioners of the candidates he had thrown off the ticket for such things as "Signing with your printed Name" versus cursive...No one told those petitioners they had to sign in cursive either.

The law is the law. Don't fill out the paperwork properly you are not registered­...period. Why is it the left that has such a hard time with the voter registration process? Why does the left think voter laws don't apply to them?

[peterhowitt]

Cute attempt to duck out of the blatant disenfranchisement that is rife.

Run along and play with your other intimidators. Surely there is a prize in the repugs camp for the most transparent least constitutionally sound excuse for purging legitimtae voters.

So far Coffman is winning by a mile.

Go to it. Only a week to go to steal this one.

Oh - I mispelled legitimate - I guess that counts me out because it is obviously not clear what I meant.......!

[kloche]

Another reason why every man, woman and young adult needs to get out and vote. Vote the Republicans out of office! Voter fraud is their forte and we need to stop them now.

It's imperative that these Republicans be swept out of office. Then the people need to start lobbying the Democrat replacements to introduce new state and federal regulations to clean up the electoral system. Why in America isn't their universal registration? Why don't we have a system where if you turn 18 you are automatically registered and all you have to do is come and vote. And people who die or go to jail are automatically removed from the system.

There is also no reason that different states should have different types of voting equipment and different forms of voting ballots. Everything should be Uniformed. Early voting should be available in all states. No one should be allowed to be disenfranchised by dirty politicians and dirty tactics. No external organizations should have to collect for registrations and encourage people to vote. And be blamed if their workers defraud the organization and the system.

This is ridiculous There are better organized elections in the poorest nations in the world.

[nyhfrog]

I don't want to hear another word about ACORN. This is the attack on American Democracy.

[JamesInDenver]

If you can afford $5, please donate to Hank Eng. He's running in a tight race against Mike Coffman for Congress.

As mentioned in this article, Mike Coffman is the Republican trying to disqualify about 10,000 voter registrations in Colorado.

Coffman says he is just following the law, but he's arguing over an incredibly minor technicality. There is an obvious logic error in the Colorado Registration form, and new voters should not be penalized because of it.

Donate to Hank Eng: http://www.hankeng.com/

Don't Reward Mike Coffman:
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/oct/21/dont-reward-mike-coffman-sending-him-congress/?partner=RSS

[JamesInDenver]

I live in Colorado, and this really does seem like an effort to surpress votes. The republican Secretary of State Mike Coffman, should be ashamed.

HERE'S THE DISPUTED SECTION of the Colorado Voter Registration form. There is clearly an error in the form. Notice the placement of the word "OR" that comes after the check-box for "I do not have a Colorado Driver's License". The placement is incorrect. Clearly the word "OR" should have been place "above" the check-box not "below" it.

This really is a lame excuse for disqualifying registrations.

___ ___ ___ ___ ___ - ___ ___ ___ ___ OR ___ ___ - ___ ___ ___ - ___ ___ ___ ___
......Colorado Driver's License Number....­..........­....Depart­ment of Revenue ID Number

[ ] I do not have a Colorado Driver's License or Dept. of Revenue Identification Number.

..........­..........­..........­..........­..........­..........­..........­....OR
If you do not have a Colorado Driver's License, or a Department of Revenue Identification Number, then provide at least the last four digits of your Social Security Number.

..........­..........­. ___ ___ ___ - ___ ___ - ___ ___ ___ ___
..........­..........­..........­..Social Security Number.
..........­..........­[ ] I don not have a Social Security Number.

Here's the link to the registration form. See for yourself:

http://www.douglas.co.us/clerk/elections/documents/approved_fillable_combo_vr_english_070208.pdf

[curly2]

Thanks for this-- it's the OR that's very confusing. It looks to me like you can check "I do not have a Colorados Driver's License or Dept. of Revenue Identification Number" OR you can fill out your social security number. Weirdly designed

[blu26]

I'm not a conspiracy theorist or anything but COME ON!!! I think they design it with the intention of being confusing just so people will be disqualified for filling it out incorrectly.

[MsMike]

If you are worried about the election being “stolen” or about your vote not being counted, here are some things you can do:
If you are a registered voter, don't let anyone or anything stop you from voting or stop your vote from counting! Before you vote, look at a sample ballot for your area, and read this story: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/myra-armstrong/easy-steps-to-ensure-your_b_136904.html. Call the hotline number 1-866-OUR-VOTE (1-866-687-8683) for advice before you go to vote or for help if you are turned away or have a problem at your election location. When you go to vote, take good ID, your cell phone, note paper & pencil. Write down and carry the hotline phone # with you.
Check your Ballot very carefully before you finish voting to be sure that you actually have selected the desired candidates.
If you ask for help from election officials, be polite. If you call the hotline number for help, give complete information and be patient.

[Harlemnite]

This is unacceptable. This country have voted for over 200 years now all of sudden we forgot how to vote. Its always slanted to the Republicans and run by a Republican lackey. Its time for everyone of us to call that 877 number and report these problems to them. I don not ever want to see what happened in 2000 and 2004 again. This is a country that tells other countries less fortunate how to set up a Democracy and have people that have been oppressed to vote. We cannot even get our act together we look like imbeciles. These things should have been worked out and tested 4 years ago. Somebody needs to go to jail if they were in charge and you still have problems.

[amluvinit2]

Funny how all of this is affecting the swing states huh? And now Bush has ordered them to step it up in Afghanistan. Shocker?

[Amalek]

Coffman is also running for Congress this election. Tom Tancredo's seat, so you can see the kind of republican he is.