Tag: Election Protection

Thousands of purged Colorado voters have no clue that they've been removed from the state's rolls. And that could make for some dramatic scenarios on Election Day tomorrow when would-be registered voters are denied a regular ballot at the polls.

As Election Day approaches, PBS and YouTube have announced the creation of Video Your Vote, a site that gathers videotaped voting experiences for the world to see. PBS' Judy Woodruff invites votersto shoot "the energy and excitement, as well as any problems you may see" and share the footage on YouTube. "Some of the most compelling videos will be included in PBS's election coverage," she says.

A federal judge took a swipe at an "obdurate" Secretary of State Mike Coffman this afternoon by ordering Colorado's top election official to stop violating federal law by purging voters. The Advancement Project, a voter protection organization, filed suit against Coffman late last week for canceling as many 30,000 voters within 90 days of the federal election, a breach of the National Voter Registration Act. Coffman's office settled with the Advancement Project late Wednesday evening, agreeing to let purged individuals vote by provisional ballot. But he has purged an additional 146 voters since then.

It's not over yet. With Election Day just around the bend, questions about Colorado's ability to pull off the big event have only mounted in recent days. Over the past two weeks, the Colorado Independent has published a Friday digest of the most important election administration news of that week. We've steered you through all sorts of wreckage: county clerks defying Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman in accepting incomplete voter registrations, Coffman admitting that he purged thousands of voters from the state rolls, El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Bob Balink trying to stop students from registering, and on and on and on.

U.S. District Judge John Kane has scheduled an emergency hearing for 1 p.m. MDT Friday to hear complaints by voting rights advocates that Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman continues to cull names from the voting rolls in defiance of a deal the judge brokered two days ago.

A Denver-based independent lab that tests and certifies electronic voting machines is being suspended by the federal Election Assistance Commission for failing to comply with national standards.

Voting rights advocates entered into a shaky truce late Wednesday with Secretary of State Mike Coffman's office over his allegedly illegal purge of 30,000 voters in Colorado. The Advancement Project, a national voter protection group, filed suit against Coffman late last week to force the secretary to reinstate the voters and halt any new purges. Coffman's removals included people who moved, inactive citizens, and newly registered individuals whose voter cards bounced back to county clerks. The Advancement Project claimed that Coffman's removals violated the National Voter Registration Act because they occurred within 90 days of a federal election. Coffman denied any wrongdoing.

An electronic voting machine in Adams County repeatedly failed to accept a vote for a Democratic state Senate candidate — instead registering the vote for her Republican opponent — at an early voting site last week and has been removed from service, the Aurora Sentinel reports Wednesday. Adams County Clerk and Recorder Karen Long told the newspaper the error doesn't reflect wider problems in the county's voting systems, but the candidate said the incident could lead to a lawsuit.

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.

As if Colorado voters didn’t have enough to worry about, an alert has been issued over a high incidence of “vote-flipping” occurring on some IVotronic machines, in which voters touch the screen for their presidential candidate, only to watch the machine switches their vote to some other guy.