Tag: Denver County

Pueblo County Clerk Gilbert Ortiz is pained by the idea that his office would fail to send an election ballot to even one of county soldier serving in the US Military overseas. He sent a letter Tuesday to Secretary of State Scott Gessler seeking an express prohibition "in writing " on sending ballots to soldiers overseas who are legally registered but inactive voters.

A $20,000 computer server gone missing. A $1 million check left for months in a mailbox. A mobile security field station squatting unused in a Lake City parking lot. Those are just a few of the blunders the governor's Homeland Security office uncovered in Colorado as its auditors sought to track the way the state was spending federal Homeland Security funds in 2008 and 2009, according to a joint study published last week by the Center for Investigative Reporting and The Center for Public Integrity.

Denver County Clerk and Recorder Stephanie O'Malley has defied Secretary of State Mike Coffman by devising a plan to let some voters with incomplete registrations fix their forms and vote regular ballots on Election Day.

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:

Hundreds of thousands of Colorado voters are sending their mail-in ballots back to county clerks this week, and among them are several dozen jail inmates who successfully registered to vote this year. 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.

With Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman unwilling to budge on incomplete voter registrations, several counties across the state have come up with partial resolutions on their own. The ever-evolving "check box" drama has to do with the state's new voter registration form. Applicants without a state ID or a driver's license must indicate as much by checking a box and then giving the last four digits of their social security numbers. But at least 6,700 new would-be voters--and as many as 10,000 by one estimate — neglected to check the box. Several thousand of these individuals have since cured their applications, but many more remain barred from voter rolls.