SOS of Colorado Finds....14 Illegal Voters
after claiming there were thousands.
Yesterday, Secretary of State Scott Gessler celebrated the end of voter registration with a press conference announcing the success of his campaign encouraging residents to sign up -- more on that below. But first, the results of the other Gessler effort, which focused on weeding out illegal voters. After working with the federal government and a facing an onslaught of negative headlines, Gessler's office has a count from across the state of those removed from voter rolls: fourteen.
We reported last month that in Denver County, Gessler's latest anti-fraud initiative resulted in four illegal voters being removed. And on Tuesday, the final day of registration, Scott Gessler spokesman Rich Coolidge gave us numbers for counties across the state: Three were removed in Adams County, three in El Paso County, two in Garfield County, one in La Plata County, one in Jefferson County and the aforementioned four in Denver. That makes fourteen.
Let's do a quick recap of the process that led to the removal of these fourteen individuals -- the result of Gessler's most recent initiative to clean up voter rolls.
Back in August, Gessler sent letters to nearly 4,000 registered voters asking them to prove they are citizens. The letter recepients were potentially illegal voters, because they had at some point presented proof of non-citizenship, such as using a green card or VISA to get a license at the DMV. Critics at the time argued that the letters might intimidate voters and could very well be sent to legal voters who had recently become citizens.
Later that month, Gessler's office announced that of the 3,903 who received the original letters, 1,011 voters moved with no forwarding address and 482 successfully affirmed their citizenship. Additionally, sixteen voluntarily withdrew their registrations. (We spoke to one legal citizen who got the letter and was not happy about it). http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2012/10/scott_gessler_illegal_colorado_voters_fourteen.php
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