CO-04 (Special Election)
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(R) Greg Lopez
(R) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Joe Biden*
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%↓
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
90%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
90%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
(R) Ron Hanks
40%
30%
20%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(R) Deborah Flora
(R) J. Sonnenberg
30%↑
15%↑
10%↓
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Dave Williams
(R) Jeff Crank
50%↓
50%↑
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
90%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) Brittany Pettersen
85%↑
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
(R) Janak Joshi
60%↑
35%↓
30%↑
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
January 12, 2013 08:27 AM UTC
13 Comments
After reading through Harvey’s gibberish, I think the only way we can truly give him peace of mind is to cancel elections entirely.
since he obviously believes, against all concrete evidence, both that same day registration and mail ins lead to increased voter fraud and that Dems commit all or most of it, that would be a sure way to stop it. Either that or just let registered Rs vote.And wouldn’t people with the foresight to get mail ins not be the same group as procrastinators who would need same day registration?
Sounds like a variation on the whining about the unfairness of all those “urban” voters getting pulled out of their “apartments” to vote. The nerve of apartment dwellers thinking they have just as much right as anyone else to vote!
Bottom line… people voting is a real problem for today’s extreme GOP in a world where grumpy old bigoted white guys make up a diminishing portion of the electorate, no matter the mechanics of voting.
Mail-in ballots do open at least two windows of opportunity for vote manipulation that I know of.
1) There’s a reason why in-person voting is done in little private booths, and it’s not to save space. It’s to ensure that people have a place where they can go and be assured of the security of casting their ballot in private. Mail-in ballots remove that protection.
2) There is an extra space of time when mail-in ballots sit somewhere in the clerk’s office after being received. The level of oversight during that time is not the same as election-day ballot monitoring, and there have been reports of boxes of mail-in ballots being misplaced. (Of course, there are also stories of regular ballot boxes being misplaced, but it seems most of those cases are where bi-partisan monitoring isn’t in place as a regular procedure.)
To say that there is no risk inherent with mail-in balloting is to avoid an analysis of the procedures involved. Having said that, some states are regularly doing all mail-in balloting and so far no-one has been caught actually rigging an election.
That’s the question and I think the answer is that fraud is possible no matter the method. Modern voting machines probably present a far greater potential for the shifting of large numbers of votes. That question answered, the next would be is there evidence of fraud having been committed and how much? So far there has been little to no evidence of any significant degree of voter fraud of that kind.
The GOP hysteria over voter fraud is a cover for their attempts to suppress the “wrong” kind of votes.
Yes, mail-in is naturally more susceptible to election fraud than in-person balloting, at least here in Colorado where there’s a paper receipt and audit requirement for DREs. Don’t know about most places in the state, but the vast majority of voters here in Gilpin still fill out optical ballots and then submit them to the scanning device – the same procedure used for mail-in ballots, except with a greater assurance of privacy.
Note that the GOP is largely concerned with voter fraud, and that is a very rare thing. Mail-in ballots must be enclosed in a signed envelope, and the signature compared against the signature of the voter. That makes mail-in ballots almost (but not quite) as secure from voter fraud as any other method of voting. The problems with mail-in ballots are with election fraud: vote buying, undue influence, and ballot handling.
Mass election fraud via machine is just as possible with mail-in ballots as with in-person ballots in this state, because the point at which most of those systems are attacked is at the vote counting system, not the ballot marking system. (In other states where DREs aren’t backed by paper trails and audits, the possibility for election fraud at the ballot marking system adds an extra attack vector.)
Of course, it’s hard to detect vote buying and influence with mail-in ballots, unless someone tattles – the ballot is marked under unknown privacy conditions and then sealed in the ballot envelope. With in-person voting, even if someone pays a voter to vote a certain way, once the voter gets behind the privacy screen the pressure on them is removed, and they can vote as they will.
Dismissing the possibility of mail-in ballot fraud is frequent among advocates, but a detached system analysis of the process indicates the possibility is there and hard to detect. Whether or not you’re an advocate, it’s something to keep in mind – either as an argument against, or when thinking about precautions to be taken to minimize the possibilities (e.g. include an election fraud hotline number and appropriate cautions in with each mail-in ballot…).
A) a significant problem or
B) either this or same day would lead to more Dems committing fraud which is the only way to interpret his statement that stuff that he thinks allows for more fraud would be a disaster for Republicans, not for Coloradans or voters in general or the integrity of our elections for everyone.
It’s the same old same old we’ve been getting from Rs as each cycle makes it tougher for them to beat the changing demographics.
A) There’s not been a significant problem revealed in any case I know of. My response was a theoretical – it’s less safe by design.
B) There is no evidence that this leads to more Dems committing voter fraud – it’s all rhetoric. What both of these policies lead to is more working class citizens registering and actually voting in elections, because both policies better accommodate the busy schedules of workers. That, as the diary points out, doesn’t favor Republicans or Democrats in any way other than that increasingly it’s Democrats whose work schedules don’t accommodate Tuesday voting and advance in-person registration.
that he just naturally assumes it’s Dems who commit fraud so fraud naturally means disaster for Rs.
Every time I read about actual prosecutions and convictions for things like jamming the other parties phone lines for rides to the polls, every time I hear about misinformation being distributed with fraudulent information about polling locations, dates, rules etc. for the purpose of tricking voters out of their opportunity to vote, every time we see news about some precincts being shorted voting machines while others have plenty of them, it has always been the work of Republicans directed against Dem leaning voters.
And weren’t those two or three voters Gessler found, who supposedly voted both in Colorado and in another state, registered Republicans?
“I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
Paul M. Weyrich, Heritage Foundation co-founder
not shocking.
That precautions should be put in place to prevent immigrants from jeopardizing their immigration status through an accidental registration?
but I also think that “accidental registration” can be determined and excused.