Originally posted on DRScoundrels March 15, 2011

The Secretary of State of Colorado, Scott Gessler released a study on March 8 that shows a disturbing problem with the Voter Registration process in his state.  The study identified almost 12,000 non-citizens as registered voters in Colorado.  More disturbing is that the study pointed out almost 5,000 non-citizens actually voted in the November 2010 elections.  The Subcommittee on Elections, part of the Committee on House Administration, has decided to follow up on the Colorado study and review measures across the country in order to ‘protect the integrity of our electoral process.’  From the Committee on House Administration’s site :

WASHINGTON – Today, Subcommittee on Elections Chairman Gregg Harper, R-Miss., issued the following statement announcing a review of state voter registration processes after a recent Colorado study revealed that as many as 5,000 non-citizens voted in Colorado during the 2010 elections:

“This report is extremely troubling and cause for a thorough review of the current registration processes implemented across the country, which I guarantee will be a priority for this Subcommittee.  It also calls into question each state’s ability to enforce current voting laws and whether or not we need to pursue additional measures to better protect the integrity of our electoral process.”

According to the study conducted by the Colorado Secretary of State in conjunction with the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles, 11,805 non-citizens registered to vote in the 2010 elections and 4,947 likely voted.  The report also finds that without access to federal citizenship data, the state is unable to identify and remove non-citizens from its voter rolls.

Registering to vote in Colorado can be done via mail, the County Clerks’ offices, the Department of Motor Vehicles or conveniently on the Secretary of State’s website.  The problem seems to be no one is cross-checking to see if a registrant is indeed a non-citizen.  When going to the online voter registration link, it simply asks for a valid Colorado license number.  It’s clear that Colorado provides licenses to non-citizens. It’s also clear that they are not doing some type of cross-check to verify that a licensed driver in Colorado is an actual citizen eligible to vote.  Of course problems are sure to arise with voter fraud.  The table below shows the findings from the SOS’s study:

*The sum of this row is greater than the reported total because some people provided more than one type of non-citizen document and appear in the data more than once. There are 211,200 unique     individuals who used a non-citizen credential to obtain or update a driver’s license or voter identification   card.

From the Colorado study:

The Department of State does not know if a person became a citizen after obtaining a driver’s license or identification card. Similarly, a non-citizen may have been improperly registered to vote, but may have later become a citizen and legally voted. For the reasons discussed (in the study), however, it is likely that many of the 4,947 voters were not citizens when they cast their vote in 2010.

While 4,947 may not seem like a very large percentage compared to the total number who voted in the 2010 General Election, there have been cases across the country where candidates have won by literally a few votes.  Why do these people think they have the right to vote as non-citizens?  Why is the state allowing them to register to vote without verifying they are indeed legal citizens?  This problem isn’t limited to Colorado.  This is a nationwide problem that is cause for concern in every election.  Protecting the sanctity of our vote is extremely important to the electoral process. 

Many Americans are already disenfranchised with our voting process due to hearing about many cases of voter fraud and believing their vote doesn’t really count. Imagine all the cases that go unnoticed or lack any investigation at all?  With all of the information technology we have today, there should be no excuses for updating Voter Registration databases to instantly know if someone is a legally able to vote.  Just one illegally cast vote that gets by should be enough to investigate and revamp the entire system.

X-Posted at www.anystreet.org and www.modernconservative.com