Colorado¹s
Wild West "roll your own" election
rules
Reposted with permission of
the author
Reliable enough for Afghanistan, too
reliable for Colorado.
February 26, 2014‹Colorado is now
the owner of an election system that would make the tin pot dictator
of any banana republic proud. The country that found a simple method
to insure voting integrity in the 2010 Iraqi elections now has a state
with no controls at all. It¹s the Wild West for elections in
Colorado.
Desperate to maintain their
hold on power after two of their senators were recalled and another
forced to resign, radical Democrats in the Colorado legislature rushed
through another election bill on the heels of last year¹s disaster
called House Bill 1303. That one contained such provisions as
mandatory all mail-in ballots, same day voter registration and reduced
residency requirements for any state-wide election to twenty-two days.
Voter ID was not included and the local polling place is a thing of
the past.
The law raised havoc with local elections. Among a host of issues was the fact that residency requirements were up to 30 days in some jurisdictions‹now longer than state wide. The hastily-written law was so bad that some had called for its repeal‹or at least a two-year delay in implementation.
Given the chance this session to fix the mistakes of the massive 1303 law, Democrats chose‹not surprisingly, perhaps‹to double down on their election free-for-all strategy. This year¹s bill, House Bill 1164, was rushed through just like last year¹s bill on straight party line votes.
Governor Hickenlooper couldn¹t sign
it into law fast enough.
The new law impacts 1,900
local taxing authorities across Colorado, including fire districts,
recreation districts, school districts, and sanitation districts. It
exempts these elections from all Colorado election rules because the
proponents of HB 1164 - local boards and town councils - demanded no
regulatory oversight of their elections.
Election integrity activist
Marilyn Marks called this approach ³roll your own² election
rules. She points out that any Colorado voter may now show up in any
local election on the same day he ³moves² into town. It
becomes easy to manipulate local elections with a few ³new
voters.²
Since 1992, voters have decided tax and debt issues on the November coordinated ballot. Last November, dozens of tax initiatives were defeated at the polls, including Democrat and union-sponsored Amendment 66, a multi-billion tax gift to unions. Coordinated elections may also become a thing of the past, voters getting multiple ballots at pretty much any time the local taxing authority chooses.
Since 1992, voters have decided tax and debt issues on the November coordinated ballot. Last November, dozens of tax initiatives were defeated at the polls, including Democrat and union-sponsored Amendment 66, a multi-billion tax gift to unions. Coordinated elections may also become a thing of the past, voters getting multiple ballots at pretty much any time the local taxing authority chooses.
Senate Republicans tried to impact the bill but to no avail. Amendments to include Secretary of State oversight; a written set of procedures; ADA-compliant and accessible polling locations and voting equipment; a local place to vote; and a host of other long-standing voter rights and security controls were all defeated.
Democrats also ignored citizens who didn¹t want mandatory mail-in ballots. When the idea of all mail-in ballots was last put to the people, it was rejected. This will come as a shock to many come November.
Silly citizens: elections are for the
government.
It doesn¹t matter who
votes, it matters who counts the votes.
Josef Stalin,
1923
Authorities holding elections
now set their own rules, count the ballots themselves without
oversight and announce the results whenever they¹re ready. If they
want to send the ballots to a tabulating company in Nevada, no
problem. Think electronic machines can¹t be rigged? Think again.
Numerous reports from the 2010
election claim that electors pushed the
button for one candidate and the result showed another.
Nor does fraud need to be
³massive.² A few percentage points may be all it takes‹and
small enough to not even raise eyebrows. A busload of ³new
residents² in a local election, ballots harvested from waste
bins or sent to phantom voters could easily tip the
balance.
Democrats can¹t take all the
blame, prominent as they have been in dismantling free and fair
elections in Colorado. The County Clerk and Recorder¹s Association
has been complicit, both Democrats and Republicans. It is an open
secret that the association is in the pocket of large makers of voting
systems but no investigative reporter has ever undertaken to look into
it. El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Wayne Williams, often the lone
opposition among country clerks, resigned from the group.
Last session Colorado Democrats tried to take away Coloradan¹s gun rights. This year they put a nail in the coffin of voting rights.
³You people in Colorado,
if you keep electing these pinheads this is what you¹re going to
get² said Bill O¹Reilly. He¹s right.
About the author
Al Maurer is a political
scientist and founder of The Voice of
Liberty. He writes on topics of
limited government and individual rights.
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