(jtowns, Flickr)

Last week, voting rights experts scored a win to protect these voters who were removed from the rolls by allowing them to vote by provisional ballot. The Advancement Project, a national voter protection organization, filed suit against Secretary of State Mike Coffman for illegally removing as many as 30,000 voters after a 90-day no purge federal deadline. In a settlement, Coffman agreed to provide provisional ballots to purged voters who show up at the polls on Election Day. These special provisional forms will be verified before any others in the two weeks after the election.

But that doesn’t solve one central problem: many purged voters simply don’t know they’ve been canceled. Coffman has directed county clerks to remove people from the rolls in order to ward against voter fraud. The secretary has an arsenal of reasons to bump individuals. But within 90 days of an election, he may only remove felony convicts, deceased people or those who request to be taken off. In its suit, the Advancement Project alleged that Coffman illegally removed eligible voters within the 90-day no purge period. The list includes people who have moved or those whose registration cards bounced back to county clerks, among other individuals.

In order to let the canceled folks know about their status, at least one organization has published a list of purged voters in Colorado and several other states. Project Vote, a nonpartisan civic engagement group based in Washington, D.C., culled the names and addresses of newly registered voters who were removed from the rolls. The organization compiled the data on a Web site, urging people to peruse the database for friends and family and alert them to call their county clerks about their registrations. Project Vote did not return phone calls seeking clarification on how it obtained and compiled its list.

However, The Colorado Independent called several people on the list and found that many of them already fixed their registrations and have voted early or by mail. These people did not find out they were purged by elections officials. Rather, they double-checked their registrations and learned of the problem on their own.

Librarian Bob Benhoff's diligence paid off. His voting rights were restored after erroneously being 'cancelled' by the Arapahoe Clerk & Recorder when he moved.

Several weeks passed and Benhoff became worried when he didn’t receive any election-related documents in the mail. He decided to check his registration online. “It is a combination of things,” he says, explaining his vigilance. “I didn’t get a Blue Book [the Colorado Legislative Council's ballot guide]. I had heard a little bit about the purging thing. I like to double and triple check.”

Benhoff plugged his information into the Arapahoe County Web site, but he didn’t show up as a registered voter. Then he called Clear Creek County to see if he was still on their rolls. He wasn’t. “Clear Creek said I was dropped from their rolls because I had moved. So I guess Arapahoe County notified them but then I got purged sometime after that.”

Benhoff called Arapahoe County to explain the problem. A clerk asked him to come to the office with a receipt to prove he had registered. Luckily, Benhoff had kept the receipt from that day in the library and he was able to fill out an emergency registration form. He voted by mail last week. But he remains perplexed as to why he was dropped from the rolls.

“If I was purged, my initial question is: Why? People have alleged that this is illegal. I can’t think of any reason why I would be legally purged.”

Another voter has a similar story. Loretta Williams, an 82-year-old mother of five, re-registered to vote in August when she moved to an assisted living facility in Arapahoe County. When the Colorado Independent phoned Williams, she did not know that her name appeared on the Project Vote list and she referred questions to her daughter, Kerri Gray.

Loretta Williams, left, with her granddaughter, Jessie, and daughter, Kerri Gray. Williams was purged from the voting rolls due to an apparent foul-up by the post office, which mistakenly returned an Arapahoe County voting confirmation card as undeliverable.

“At that point, I knew we had a problem,” says Gray, stressing the importance of the election to her mother and her family. “One of the things that has been motivating my mom to stay alive is this election. That is one of the reasons she is here.”

Gray phoned Arapahoe County. The clerk looked up Williams’ information and saw that her voter confirmation card was returned to sender and that she was struck from the rolls. Colorado law mandates counties to remove any voter applicants whose confirmation cards bounce back to the county within 20 days in order to verify that person’s address. The Advancement Project challenged the legality of this so-called 20-day rule in its suit against Coffman, but the settlement did not address the law.

Gray says that the clerk on the phone guessed that the post office was to blame since Williams’ address was listed correctly on the form. And though the clerk agreed to reinstate her mother, Gray was shaken up. “I was in tears,” she says, “I said, ‘I am not going to have to tell my mom that she can’t vote.’ That would be the last thing this year I could handle.”

Williams has since received her mail-in ballot. Gray says she will help her mother fill it out since she is blind in one eye, and she plans to hand-deliver it herself. “I don’t trust anybody,” she says, adding that she wishes someone had contacted her mother about the problem. “It would have been good to at least have a phone call. It was just luck. It was me being very engaged and trying to watch out for my mom.”

But many other purged voters won’t be so lucky. Coffman had another 146 names removed from Colorado’s rolls last week, prompting a federal judge to order Coffman to desist. These people join the thousands-long list of individuals who will get the ultimate Election Day surprise when they’ll learn they can’t vote by regular ballot.

A view of the Rocky Mountains from the fast-growing south Denver suburb Centennial. (notanyron, Flickr)

Located in the southeast region of Denver’s Metro Area, Arapahoe County is home to many affluent neighborhoods and golf courses that have come to illustrate suburbia. For many years, Republicans controlled Arapahoe County, making up nearly 40 percent of the electorate with unaffiliated voters far surpassing Democrats. But changes in the state’s political winds and voter demographics have taken their toll on the Republican majority in Arapahoe since 2004 and indeed the number of active Democrats in Arapahoe surpassed the number of active Republicans in 2008.

“The upscale neighborhoods and the surburbanite folks with a good education who used to be the backbone of the Republican Party are now moving toward the Democrats and so are their children,” said Colorado College political science professor Bob Loevy. “You are seeing that in Arapahoe and Jefferson counties. Those voters used to be solid conservative strongholds but they have been trending Democrat during the last eight years.”

More than 220,000 people have registered to vote in Colorado this year, including 50,000 in Arapahoe County, according to Secretary of State data. Of the 50,000 new voters in Arapahoe County, 20,000 are Democrats compared with 10,000 new Republicans.

In 2004, there were 136,870 Republicans in Arapahoe County, or 37 percent of the electorate. At the same time, Democrats accounted for 29 percent, or 108,987 voters with unaffiliated voters numbering 125,755 making up the remaining 34 percent. Fast forward to 2008 and the party breakdown has shifted substantially. Republicans have lost ground during the last four years and now only account for 33 percent of the Arapahoe County electorate, or 114,007 voters. Democrats on the other hand have made gains and now boast more registered voters than the Republicans with 119,392, or 34 percent. The remaining 109,908 voters, or 32 percent, are unaffiliated.

The shift in Arapahoe County away from the Republican Party has been seen statewide and is widely believed to be due to a number of political conditions.

According to Loevy there are many factors for the shift including a weak party brand on the national level and a Colorado electorate that has moved away from that social conservatism that has been popular in recent years to favor politics that concentrate more on fiscal conservatism.

“The Iraq war and the economic downturn have pushed the social conservative agenda off the map in this election,” Loevy said. “It was popular in the out-burbs, the brand new subdivisions that have grown up in Colorado, that is where the socially conservative agenda played well. But, as President George Bush becomes more unpopular and the party brand is weakened by the economy, you are seeing many of the upscale, socially conservative folks shifting to the Democrats, or at least their children are.”

Is Arapahoe ready for Election Day?

With so much attention being paid to Colorado as a swing state this year in the presidential election, Arapahoe County’s large population and relatively close registration numbers have garnered concern among some elected officials in Colorado, including Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Golden. Perlmutter, who represents part of the county, sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Coffman and Arapahoe County Clerk Nancy Doty last week asking that Coffman appoint an independent election monitor to oversee polls in Araphoe County next week.

In his letter to Coffman, Perlmutter said he was unsure if Arapahoe County is ready for the rush of voters expected to come out to the polls on Election Day and said the potential for long lines and problems with the electronic voting machines could suppress some voters.

“Not only would such a delay potentially turn away many would-be voters, any widespread problems with the machines would paralyze the polls in Arapahoe County and disenfranchise thousands of citizens,” Perlmutter wrote in his letter.

Doty, who told The Colorado Independent earlier this month that she didn’t foresee many Election Day problems, including extraordinarily long lines, because of such a large percentage of county voters who are voting by mail this year, responded to Perlmutter’s concerns with a written statement to media. About 65 percent of Arapahoe County’s 343,358 voters have requested mail-in ballots.

“Despite the concerns raised by Candidate Ed Perlmutter’s campaign office, the Arapahoe County Clerk and Recorder’s Office is confident that the election in Arapahoe County will be a fair and honest election,” Doty wrote. “We are working diligently to prepare for the upcoming general election and we are already busy processing the thousands of mail ballots that have been returned, as well as accommodating the many people who are participating in early voting.”

Coffman, whose office has been deflecting concerns by many independent election watchdog groups in recent weeks, turned down Perlmutter’s request for an election observer in Arapahoe County late last week. In his written statement, Coffman said he believed Doty was adequately prepared to handle the expected turnout on Election Day.

“The concerns of Arapahoe County’s ability to effectively manage voter wait times have been discussed,” Coffman said.”Ms. Doty is preparing a response for me. If I find the response insufficient, I will take immediate action and order the deployment of additional resources.”

In her interview with The Colorado Independent, Doty said she felt good about the efforts her office has made to ensure all county residents who want to vote this year can do so.

“We had a 93 percent turnout in 2004 and I expect that to go up this year to be around 95 percent,” Doty said, adding she has done much public outreach to inform voters of their many options. “I have sent out two mailings this year because I knew that we were going to be a long ballot. Voters have also been getting corespondence from the campaigns. In addition, we have 200 polling locations and have added an extra 100 voting machines this year. I know we are ready.”

(Photo/mystereys, Flickr)

The clock is ticking down until Colorado’s big day. And with the John McCain campaign all but pulling out of the state as Barack Obama pushes forward, the result of the November election in Colorado may be coming into focus.

Unfortunately, when it comes to election administration in Colorado, things are getting muddier and muddier by the day. In our election bungle roundup last week, we guided you through the week’s most important news: national groups slamming Secretary of State Mike Coffman on his voter registration policy, Attorney General John Suthers backing Coffman in his recent voter purge, El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Bob Balink further disenfranchising student voters, and more. Read on to for the latest foul-ups:

Come one, come all! Vote early! Vote by mail! Oh, wait…

This Monday kicked off the start of two weeks of early voting in Colorado. Long-touted as the antidote to massive Election Day lines, Monday’s early vote went smoothly, according to The Rocky Mountain News. But not so with another type of voting. County clerks across the state found their offices gummed up with mail-in ballot requests and unable to quickly deliver ballots to waiting voters. In Adams County, election workers were put on mandatory 12-hour shifts this week to deal with the avalanche of mail-in forms, as the Rocky reported. Meanwhile, the Secretary of State’s office added an election tracker on its Web site complete with the ever-increasing number of mail-in ballot requests. Now you can watch the inundation unfold in real time.

Think you’re registered to vote? The answer depends on where you live.

A few county clerks got feisty this week by accepting some incomplete voter registrations onto the rolls. According to the Rocky, Jefferson and Larimer counties absorbed registrations with the so-called “check box” issue, in which applicants wrote down the last four digits of their Social Security numbers but neglected to check a box indicating as much. Other counties have been rejecting these forms until the applicant cures his or her registration, per the secretary of state’s wishes. Coffman, who has ignored voting experts’ pleas to change his policy, issued a wrist-slap to the clerks, telling them to follow the law, according to The Denver Post. Meanwhile, Denver County has pulled out all the stops to get “check box” voters to cure their forms before Election Day. The most recent attempt? Robocalls.

A little extra oversight on Election Day? Not for those of you in Arapahoe County…

Voting rights experts aren’t the only ones fretting over Colorado’s ability to pull off the national election. Early this week, U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, a Democrat who represents Arapahoe County, sent a letter to Secretary of State Coffman asking him to pick an independent election monitor to survey the Arapahoe County polls on Election Day, according to The Denver Post. Perlmutter specifically worried that the county — which will use electronic voting machines this election — is unprepared to deal with machine failures, and he asked Arapahoe County Clerk and Recorder Nancy Doty to stock paper ballots at the polls. Traditionally Republican Arapahoe County has seen a huge increase in Democratic registrations this year, and Perlmutter said he wants things to go smoothly on Election Day. But in keeping with his no-way-no-how reputation, Coffman rebuffed Perlmutter, saying in a letter that he won’t post a monitor “unless there are concerns submitted to my office that election laws in Arapahoe County are not being adhered to,” according to the Rocky.

The Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition recently launched a vigorous vote-from-jail campaign. And while some counties have been more receptive than others, in Denver alone the number of voting inmates quadrupled from 20 people in 2004 to 80 this year.

“People were really excited,” says CCJRC re-entry coordinator Carol Peeples. “They said, ‘Thank you.’”

In spite of the increased interest, voting from jail is no easy task. First of all, not everyone who wants to register to vote is eligible to do so. In Colorado, felons and felon parolees are barred from voting. People who are on probation may vote. And those in jail awaiting trial or serving time for a misdemeanor crime may also vote.

The CCJRC Web site recommends that eligible detainees re-register to vote, even if they had signed on previously, because “there is a good chance that your name was removed from the Secretary of State’s list of registered voters.”

Many eligible inmates never register to vote, however, because they lack the right identification. Major Vicki Connors at the Denver County Jail estimates that 400 of the facility’s 2,000 inmates are eligible to vote. Some inmates asked a family member to bring a driver’s license or a state identification card to the jail, while others gave jail staff permission to go through their property and find an ID. But many had no paperwork whatsoever. “Quite a few didn’t have any ID, not even on the outside,” she says.

Connors and Peeples appealed to Secretary of State Mike Coffman to allow inmates to use their booking sheets — which include a photo and a birth date — as identification in order to register. But, according to Peeples, Coffman denied the request on the grounds that the sheet doesn’t include a residential address.

Coffman’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

“The rule of thumb is if it is not acceptable on the outside, then we can’t use it on the inside,” says Connors. “It was like we were going over and above [the call of duty], and that is against the rules.”

Connors says she facilitated voting for inmates in other ways. She posted CCJRC pamphlets around the jail and distributed voter affidavit forms to interested inmates, who then returned them, along with a photocopy of an ID as well as the registration form, to the county clerk.

When inmates receive their mail-in ballots, they must fill them out in the jail library, since they can’t have pens elsewhere in the building. Then they use money from their own commissary funds to pay for the ballot’s $1.17 in postage.

“You know what? They have rights,” says Connors, explaining her willingness to help inmates to vote. “They have due process. They have not been convicted. And the people who have already been convicted don’t lose their other rights, like the right to medical attention, or the right to due process. It is my job to make sure that everyone gets what is coming to them.”

Not everyone across the state is as enthusiastic. In Arapahoe and El Paso counties, for instance, jail officials don’t inform inmates of their voting rights unless they ask.

“From a resource standpoint it is not something that we can do. We can’t provide them more information at this time,” says Lari Sevene, public information officer for the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office.

But Connors says that helping inmates vote reverberates beyond the ballot box.

“There was one person who won’t go to court until several weeks after the election. Technically, he is absolutely eligible to vote,” she says. “But this guy has 19 charges against him. This will be the last time ever in his life that he will vote, for sure, guaranteed. You know, you think about that when you are in the Department of Corrections. You think about what you gave up.”

The resolution, passed unanimously by Arapahoe County Democrats in January, carries a list of grievances against Bush and Cheney that would make even a Boulder resident blush. Among them:

” … plotting and causing to be carried out changes to law and rules of engagement that violate the U.S. Constitution, international treaties, federal statute, international law, and even the more than 700 year old foundations of western legal principles and common notions of decency … engaging in illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens at large and without cause, and publicly denying this repeatedly to the American public … encouraging and engaging in direct reprisals against, censorship of, and career promotions of government staff and/or committee members, based on partisan political and/or religious beliefs rather than expertise … subversion of government posts and scientific committees to deny the American public access to information relating to their health and welfare … promoting and tolerating outright cronyism and conflict of interest assignments of ‘no-bid’ contracts to companies that repeatedly engage in fraudulent waste of taxpayer dollars and in actions that cause extreme harm and disgrace our nation.”

Arapahoe County boasts more registered Republicans and unaffiliated voters than Democrats and isn’t known as a bastion of liberalism. But the impeachment resolution met no opposition, indicating it’s not a fringe issue, county party officials said.

Sonia Skakich-Scrima, a supporter of the resolution and vice chair of the Arapahoe County Democrats House District 41 in Aurora, said the resolution was brought forward by popular demand.

“In my involvement in impeachment discussions in the Arapahoe Democratic Party, I have been surprised at how wide and strong the impeachment impetus is in Aurora and Arapahoe County,” she said.

But with the party in high gear for the upcoming February caucus, Arapahoe County Chair Mike Hamrick said news of the impeachment resolution was overshadowed.

Skakich-Scrima also notes that media outlets may have dismissed the resolution, and any coverage of it, as the work of far left-leaning “Bush haters,” but she stresses that’s not the case.

At least one longtime Arapahoe Country Republican said she was surprised, and amused, by the impeachment resolution. 

“I think it’s a waste of their time,” said Lynne Cottrell, a former chairwoman for the Arapahoe County Republicans. “I think there are more things to focus on. I’m glad they’re focusing on Bush and Cheney, because they’re not running.”

But Skakich-Scrima doesn’t think pushing forward with the call for impeachment is futile.

Earlier this month, Arapahoe County Democrats added the resolution to their 2008 platform and are hoping the impeachment item will have a future of its own in the state, and eventually, the national Democratic Party’s platform.

“This is what the grassroots thinks is really important,” Skakich-Scrima said.

Now, she is under investigation again by the body that regulates attorney ethics for allegedly making a “veiled threat” against a judge in an e-mail, according to the Denver Post and its TV news partner, 9News. One of the key e-mails, dated April 17 says that:

[P]reventing problems is much better than trying to clean up the mess after the fact. Since we tend to get the blame when things go wrong, I want to be on record as saying that if a judge shows overt hostility toward the People, any given attorney, or makes inappropriate comments concerning the cases, the victims, trial loads etc., there absolutely will be docket control problems in that division.

There is a right way and a wrong way to deal with a judge who you feel isn’t giving you a fair shake.  The right way is to file a grievance with the body that disciplines judges who act inappropriately (without threatening in advance to do so), and to seek relief from appellate courts where a trial is impaired by a judge’s actions.  A threat to swamp a particular judge with work in an effort to get your way is essentially a threat to engage in frivilous litigation conduct in order to get what you want, without regard to whether your complaint is or is not justified.

A tit for tat “don’t play nice” approach may work when dealing with another lawyer or law firm with a history of misconduct in private pratice.  It doesn’t work well with judges, whom lawyers have a limited ability to punish, and who have expansive powers to retalite with impunity against lawyers.

The ethics charge is, however, a close call.  While threating a criminal or administrative actions to gain advantage in a civil matter is a clear violation of the Colorado Rules of Professional Conduct, Chamber’s office deals with criminal cases, and her threat is essentially to gum up the system and make life unpleasant for the judge, not to personally impair the judge financially or personally.

One of the rules likely implicated in this case states:

A lawyer shall not:
  (a) seek to influence a judge, juror, prospective juror or other official by means prohibited by law;
  (b) communicate ex parte with such a person except as permitted
  by law; or 
  (c) engage in conduct intended to disrupt a tribunal.

The official commentary to that rule states:

A lawyer may stand firm against abuse by a judge but should avoid reciprocation; the judge’s default is no justification for similar dereliction by an advocate.

Here, the means implied in the e-mail are not clear, but the e-mail itself could be considered “conduct intended to disrupt a tribunal.”  Indeed, to the extent that “conduct intended to disrupt a tribunal” is itself something prohibited by law, the e-mail may be an attempt to influence a judge by means prohibited by law.

Lawyers are also subject to an ethical rule similar to the “conduct unbecoming an officer” rule of military justice.  It provides a variety a rather vague grounds for prosecutions of ethical violations by attorneys including the following:

It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to: . . .

violate or attempt to violate the rules of professional
conduct, knowingly assist or induce another to do so, or do so through the act of another; . . .

engage in conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice; . . . 

state or imply an ability to influence improperly a judge, judicial officer, government agency or official; . . .

engage in conduct which violates accepted standards of legal ethics; or . . .

engage in any other conduct that adversely reflects on the lawyer’s fitness to practice law.

The official commentary to this rule notes that:

Lawyers holding public office assume legal responsibilities going beyond those of other citizens.  A lawyer’s abuse of public office can suggest an inability to fulfill the professional role of an attorney.

The Colorado Supreme Court, which has a 5-2 split between judges often considered liberal in the majority, and judges often considered conservative in the minority.  If the Colorado Supreme Court is sufficiently offended by this kind of overture towards a judge, it could sanction Chambers under this general provision, rather than the more specific provision related to impartiality of the tribunal.  This is what happened the last time she received a public censure.

The stakes are high because Carol Chambers is already in the almost unprecedented position of receiving a public censure for ethical violations while holding office as a District Attorney.  The Colorado Supreme Court views repeat ethics violators who commit one violation after another in a short period of time particularly dimly, so a finding of a violation in this case could easily result in a suspension of Carol Chamber’s license to practice law for a limited period of time.  A disbarment would be unlikely for this kind of ethical breach, even if it is found to be an ethical breach by a court.

Also, strategically speaking, the e-mail is simply dumb.  The reality is that in Colorado it is virtually impossible to remove a judge from office absent truly egregious conduct (like having sex with litigants who appear before you in a case).  But, the e-mail that Chambers sent is far more likely to encourage every judge to doubt the credibility of Chambers and her deputy district attorneys, and to deny her office the benefit of the doubt and a presumption of good faith, than it is to produce favorable rulings for the People in criminal cases.  It is very hard to intimidate a judge.

The District Attorney’s office admits to sending the e-mail (sensibly, as it would be hard to deny) and has defended its actions.  According to the Post that D.A.’s spokesperson said:

I do not believe this is an instance where the elected District Attorney is innocuously trying to be helpful and ‘prevent problems,’ but rather a blatant attempt to intimidate this judge and any other judge now and in the future, who issues rulings perceived as unfavorable to the district attorney or admonishes one of the attorneys.

Chambers herself said:

I am not trying to threaten anyone.  I’m trying to solve a problem that’s observable and statistically based within our courthouse.

In the law, however, being right isn’t everything.  Lawyers have to both show that they are right and win by legally acceptable means.

Suburban Denver’s Douglas and Arapahoe counties are both part of the 18th Judicial District.