Denver Post reported
DA investigating firm for voter registration violations
Eighteenth Judicial District Attorney Carol Chambers has launched an investigation into a firm hired by the Colorado Republican Party to register voters, which has since been fired, a watchdog group has learned.
Washington, D.C.-based Strategic Allied Consulting had a contract worth more than $400,000 with the state GOP to register Colorado voters over the summer.
Last week, the firm was accused of potentially fraudulent activity doing the same type of work in Florida. Eleven county clerks there are investigating claims that voters were registered with fake addresses.
The Republican National Committee fired the firm, and state GOP director Ryan Call followed suit last week.
In Colorado, one young Strategic Allied Consulting employee was caught on tape outside a grocery store saying she wanted to register only people who were going to vote for GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, which is illegal. Call said she was fired.
The probe into Strategic Allied Consulting by the 18th Judicial District was confirmed by Colorado Ethics Watch on Thursday after the group asked for all communications between Strategic Allied Consulting and Secretary of State Scott Gessler in an open-records request.
The request was denied because of the ongoing DA investigation, Gessler's office told Colorado Ethics Watch director Luis Toro.
"It does suggest there is something wrong going on with this outfit," Toro said. "We don't want to make too much out of it ... but if someone feels their registration should be manipulated or destroyed, they should check and see if they are properly registered."
Read more: DA investigating firm for voter registration violations - The Denver Post
This report comes from this
CORA request and response.
and this web announcement from Ethics Watch Legal filings
On the other hand the Denver Post reported Secretary of State Gessler speaking of phantom non citizen registrations,
Secretary of State Scott Gessler: Left doesn't care about voter fraud
Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler told a conservative audience Friday that his critics don't care about voter fraud and are "willing to lie" and "play the racism card."
Gessler, a Republican, made his comments during a panel discussion titled "Stealing Elections: What the Left Doesn't Want You to Know About Voter Fraud," held at a gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Denver where Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney made a visit Thursday.
Gessler has come under fire for suggesting there were more than 11,000 noncitizens registered in Colorado but then only identifying 141 suspected noncitizens registered to vote. Of those, 35 had voted at some point.
At least one of those is a U.S. citizen.
Gessler, though, said he believes there are many more noncitizens, and his search continues.
"They (the left) don't care if they (would-be voters) are noncitizens," he told hundreds in the audience. "They'll register them to vote, and if that noncitizen registers and then votes, they suffer serious consequences — criminal prosecution, loss of the ability to ever become a citizen — but the voter-registration drive never suffers any of those consequences.
"So, I think they're very happy to manipulate people into believing it's OK to ignore these laws."
He added that the left tries to generate hatred, "to demonize, frankly, people who are conservative and believe in limited government."
Gessler continued, "This is the tool they use, and of course the ultimate card they play is the racism card."
A spokeswoman for a coalition of voter- rights groups that includes left-leaning groups such as Common Cause and Colorado Ethics Watch said Gessler's comments were shocking.
"This guy is so bad, I don't even know what to say," Ellen Dumm said. "He has been so divisive from Day One and so partisan. ... His make-believe enemy is noncitizens voting, and we haven't found one."
Where yesterday the
AP Honors Ivan Moreno For Gessler Deconstruction
The Managing Editor for State News, Financial News and Global Training Kristin Gazlay honored Colorado-based AP correspondent Ivan Moreno for his investigative reporting on Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler's failed campaign to purge, as it turned out, more or less non-existent noncitizen voters:
Denver's Ivan Moreno started pursuing the issue of voter fraud in Colorado after nearly 4,000 voters received letters from the secretary of state challenging their citizenship and, therefore, their right to cast ballots. He filed an open records request for the 4,000 names but was stymied by the government saying they were part of an ongoing investigation and should not be made public. But he didn't stop there...
As weeks passed, Moreno was the only reporter checking in daily for progress on the secretary of state's investigation. The list of potential noncitizens kept getting smaller and smaller, shrinking from 4,000 to 1,400 to just 141 - and Moreno was the first to report that the authenticity of only 141 voters was being challenged.
He kept asking for the identities of those on the list, and finally got the names of 35 people suspected of being noncitizens who had voted in past elections. Moreno called every one he could find, confirming independently that they were citizens. As a result, the Denver Clerk and Recorder's office, which had seen the many stories Moreno produced on the issue, sent him their list of voters and said the citizenship of every one had been verified. [added emphasis]
Moreno's reporting culminated with a look into efforts by Republican SOS's to purge what they've maintained as "thousands" of noncitizens casting ballots in U.S. elections. The miniscule small numbers of such voters actually found after so much agitation has severely attacked a GOP talking point, where their credibility has been hurt. This was accomplished by simply asking questions.