(Photo/joebeone, Flickr)

Thousands of Coloradans have been denied the right to vote because of a policy that may violate federal law.

Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman has authorized county clerks to purge newly registered voters under the so-called 20-day rule. Here, county clerks must send non-forwardable letters to newly registered voters. If the mail bounces back to the clerks, then they must remove the voter applicants’ names from the rolls.

Voting rights advocates say that the policy violates the 1965 National Voting Rights Act. The Advancement Project, a voter protection organization, filed suit on behalf of several other groups against Coffman to halt the practice and reverse course on other voter purges. According to the suit, 3,291 of these 20-day applicants have been removed since August 2007.

“We consider these voters to have been registered when they are entered into the SCORE database,” Jenny Flanagan, executive director of Colorado Common Cause told the Colorado Independent, referring to the state’s new voter database. “They have met the other requirements for registrations and they are taken off when the cards are returned. There are examples of when there could have been an error.”

Individuals ejected by the 20-day rule are among the 30,000 purged voters that make up the basis of the lawsuit. According to the complaint, Coffman also canceled duplicate registrations and registrations of people who moved. The NVRA specifies that the state may only cancel three types of voters within 90 days of a federal election: deceased people, felony convicts, and those who withdraw their own names.

Flanagan, who is also a plaintiff in the case, says that the 20-day rule is subject to human fallacy. A would-be voter might make a mistake on his or her own address on the form. But so could a registrar at the clerk’s office when entering the data. Postal employees aren’t immune to slip-ups either.

“We believe that it should not be allowed any time,” she says. “There are efforts to protect voters during this election, but there are some long term solutions we are seeking. We want to end this practice of canceling registrations and get the state in compliance with the NVRA.”

The NVRA does allow for voters to be removed from state rolls, but only after county clerks have sent a forwardable mail confirmation and waited two election periods to see whether the voters shows up to vote, according to Sarah Brannon, staff attorney with the Fair Elections Legal Network, a group acting as legal counsel on the lawsuit. “[Applicants] can’t be removed within 20 days,” she says.

Brannon says that the 20-day rule doesn’t disproportionately affect one population or another. But a Colorado Independent report published earlier this month showed that homeless people in particular are impacted by the legislation. Many homeless voters register using shelters or day centers as their mailing address. Counties send confirmation forms to these locations. But if homeless people don’t turn up within a week or two to pick up the mail, shelters typically return it to the sender. Which means that the homeless individuals are struck from the rolls.

Colorado isn’t the only state with a 20-day rule on the books. In Michigan, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Advancement Project — the same group bringing forward the suit in Colorado — successfully challenged a similar law; the state was ordered to stop purging voters whose confirmation cards were returned to county clerks.

The case will be heard on Wednesday afternoon.

Coffman’s office did not return repeated requests for comment. He has defended his purges in the past; Attorney General John Suthers has also backed Coffman, saying that the cancellations did not violate the NVRA.

(Photo/unquiet, Flickr)

Colorado’s confusing voter registration form has prompted county clerks to reject at least 4,800 new voter applications. And while election officials say there’s still time for the applicants to get onto voter rolls, watchdog groups warn of unintended disenfranchisement.

Colorado’s Secretary of State office issued a new voter registration form this year to allow applicants the option to permanently receive a mail-in ballot. But in its inaugural year, the form has caused confusion among voter registration groups and the more than 215,000 people they’ve signed up. At issue is the ID requirement in the state. An applicant with a Colorado driver’s license or a state ID must enter his or her ID number on the form. In the case that the individual does not have either of those cards, that person may enter the last four digits of his or her social security number plus check a box to indicate that he or she doesn’t have a state card.

Problem is, thousands of applicants — most of them students from out of state, as well as elderly individuals without driver’s licenses — have accidentally entered their social security numbers without checking the box. Others who do have driver’s licenses have entered their social security numbers anyway. In Denver alone, around 3,100 applicants have been kept off the rolls for this so-called “check box” problem. And in Boulder, another 1,700 applicants have been rejected for that and other registration form problems. But many more could be rejected in the next few days. Voter registration ended on Monday, and county clerks are still processing forms.

“Large numbers of people are not going to make it onto the voter registration rolls for a minor mistake,” says Sarah Brannon, staff attorney with the Fair Elections Legal Network, a nonpartisan voter participation group in Washington, D.C. “The form could be more clearly worded. There are questions about the fairness of not allowing people to get on the voter rolls.”

“The impact [of the new form] is much greater than expected,” adds Jenny Flanagan, executive director of Common Cause, a Colorado nonprofit aimed at holding elected leaders accountable. “There are many registration forms without the box checked that include the social security number.”

According to ACORN (short for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), a national nonpartisan group that has registered more than 65,000 new voters in Colorado, the Denver County clerk’s office warned registration circulators a few weeks ago about the problem.

“Denver called us and said, ‘We are getting a few too many people with driver’s licenses putting down the last four numbers of their social,” says Ben Hanna, ACORN’s Colorado director.

In order to prevent more problems, Hanna’s circulators made sure to ask applicants trying to use their social security number if they had a driver’s license at home. If they answered ‘yes,’ the circulators told the applicants to come back with that ID, rather than risk having a faulty application rejected by county clerks. And if applicants were indeed eligible to use their social, the circulators asked them to check the little box.

But, says Hanna, “There’s only so much that we can do. At the end of the day our circulators place no marks on the form and they don’t fill them out. It is on the applicant.”

The Boulder and Denver county clerks offices have notified applicants with deficient registration forms so they can fix them before the election. In order to vote early, applicants must amend their forms before Oct. 20. Otherwise, they must make the changes by Oct. 31, when, says Denver County Clerk and Recorder spokesman Alton Dillard, the county finalizes its poll book. Representatives from the Secretary of State’s office did not return phone calls seeking clarification on the issue.

Dillard pooh-poohs the idea that the check box problem will end in voter disenfranchisement. “[Registration issues] happen every election,” he says. “The talk going on about people being denied the right to vote because of this is incorrect.”

But others are not so sure. “I don’t know what the outcome will be,” says Brannon.

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First there was Florida. Then there was Ohio. Will Colorado be next?

The state’s got a brand new voter database system, the longest ballot in the nation and hundreds of thousands of new voter registrations to contend with, all of which raise the specter of chaos at the polls come November. And while elections officials maintain that Colorado can pull off its elections without a hitch, several voter watchdog groups say otherwise.

Election turmoil in Florida in 2000 and in Ohio in 2004 was caused by a number of factors, from election worker shortages to voting machine malfunctions. While Colorado shares some but not all of these problems, the biggest question mark in the state is whether or not a new voter database system, called SCORE (which stands for Statewide Colorado Registration and Election) will perform up to snuff.

Colorado rolled out the SCORE program this year — two years later than anticipated and, at last count, more than $3 million over budget — in order to comply with the Help America Vote Act. The 2002 congressional mandate was a response to the 2000 Florida election fiasco in which voter disenfranchisement and disputed ballots called the final tally into question. HAVA aimed to ameliorate problems with voting systems across the United States. In Colorado, the Secretary of State’s Office implemented SCORE and purchased a number of electronic voting machines to adhere to the new regulations.

Those machines were the subject of a major controversy last year, when Secretary of State Mike Coffman decertified and later recertified the equipment under a cloud of suspicion. But while the voting machine debacle has quieted down, SCORE’s performance has yet to be judged.

Often referred to as an “electronic poll book,” SCORE compiles statewide voter information into a single database. When a voter goes to the polls, he or she will be asked to check in using the SCORE system.

“I suspect it is going to work,” says Larimer County Clerk and Recorder Scott Doyle. “I hope.”

But difficulties could arise if new voters’ registrations are not properly entered into the system ahead of Election Day.

“Because we have had such a massive voter registration effort, we expect to see problems where people think they are registered but actually find they are not at the polls,” says Jenny Flanagan, executive director of Common Cause, a Colorado nonprofit aimed at holding elected leaders accountable.

“With the close of registration we see massive amounts of forms coming in and the counties have to process those forms and be in touch with any voter that might have a problem,” she adds. Colorado voter registration ended on Monday, but those who registered before the deadline will have the chance to amend their applications in the case that they made a mistake or an omission. More than 215,000 new voters have signed up since January.

In addition, there are questions as to whether the system will be overrun when poll workers across Colorado log in en masse.

“This is a new system. This will be the first general election they use it,” says Sarah Brannon, staff attorney with the Fair Elections Legal Network, a nonpartisan group in Washington, D.C., devoted to increasing voter participation. “People will be using the system throughout the course of the day to check voters into the system. So there is a question of whether there will be an overload of use.”

An estimated 20,000 Denver County voters left the polls before casting a ballot in 2006 after an epic electronic poll book failure that prevented elections officials from confirming the eligibility of voters, causing long lines and short tempers. Sequoia Voting Systems, the firm that received the no-bid database contract, blamed “user error” on poll workers. A former software firm owner who served as an Election Day poll book judge told The Colorado Independent days after the 2006 election that a faulty, untested and possibly unfinished product constantly crashed when poll workers across the county logged in.

In order to avoid that fate, some counties have opted to print a paper poll book to check off voters.

“I don’t have any inclination that it will fall apart, but it is something we are watching very closely,” says Flanagan. “Every county is going to be different whether it uses the electronic poll book or a paper one.”

While elections groups warn of possible SCORE problems, the Secretary of State’s Office remains confident about the program. Spokesman Rich Coolidge did not return a Monday phone call seeking comment, but the Durango Telegraph recently quoted Coffman expressing his optimism after a mock primary election using SCORE was held last May. “I’m pleased that the election met the goals we set and was ultimately a success,” he told the Telegraph.

Though SCORE’s performance has yet to be determined, Colorado could face problems akin to those in Florida and Ohio. In 2000, Florida’s election hold-up had to do with faulty voting machines that miscounted votes.

“We have a history of problems with voting machines,” says Flanagan, referring to Coffman’s decertification and subsequent recertification of electronic voting systems statewide. “It is a potential issue we might see.”

And in Ohio, the hours-long lines of 2004 could be replicated here unless each county takes care to adequately staff its polling places. “In Colorado, we don’t have specific formulas to require how we set up our polling places,” says Flanagan. “That is something we are at risk for but we haven’t had huge problems in the past.”

Flanagan says that she won’t be the only one in the state who will be closely monitoring the election. Her organization, Common Cause, has joined with members of the League of Women Voters of Colorado, the Colorado Lawyers Committee, Latina Initiative and the League Center for People with Disabilities and Older People to form Just Vote Colorado, a group devoted to tracking and assisting with the election.

But there will also be other eyes on the state as well come Nov. 4. “Because it is going to be a close election the political parties are going to be looking at every nuance,” she says.