Saturday, October 16, 2004
More Voter Registration Hijinks in Colorado
There was also one form Friday that resurrected Chicago-style politics. A dead person was registering to vote.
Election workers cross-reference voter registration information with vital records such as death certificates, and this particular "Joe" had been flagged as a "death delete" file.
Don't worry. In Denver, you can't vote from the grave. The new registration was found invalid and forwarded to the Denver district attorney's office for investigation of possible fraud.
In the basement of a downtown city building, 25 temporary workers are racing the clock to enter thousands of registrants before early voting starts Monday. The numbers are stunning. Since Sept. 1, Denver workers have recorded 25,000 new voters, 5,000 more than they registered in all of 2003.
With a tsunami of new voters and several groups working to boost registration, some forms are suspected as being fraudulent.
Denver workers have referred 200 suspicious registrants to the district attorney's office. They have sent copies of each case to the secretary of state as well.
Tina Romero, voter outreach coordinator for Denver, said the computer immediately flags names of voters who have registered more than once.
"We have a very fool-proof system," Romero said. "They're caught immediately."
What follows is a county by county story of voter registration tidbits . I suspect that the Dems will say reporting on this is Voter Intimidation, but when was fraud a right?
