January 24, 2013 09:46 AM UTC

Not news: Gessler raises specter of "dramatic" fraud, if election-day registration passed

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• by: Jason Salzman

(Getting a bit threadbare, maybe? – promoted by Colorado Pols)

If you’re a reporter, you’re naturally inclined to pay attention to your Secretary of State when he or she warns that possible legislation could lead to “dramatic” vote fraud.

But if it’s Colorado’s Scott Gessler, we’ve all learned by now, journalists can relax. Just relax. No need to race to get it up on Twitter. No need to rush anywhere, because it’s not news. He’s lost his credibility way more than Chicken Little.

So, I hope you didn’t get excited if you happened to be listening to Greeley radio station KFKA Monday morning and heard Gessler say this to host Tom Lucero:

“I’ve heard a lot of radical stuff coming out of the Legislature. We’ll see what actually happens.

“But one of the things that I’ve heard that they want to push is same day voter registration, where someone shows up on Election Day and registers immediately. And that creates all kinds of havoc in our systems, and it’s not secure at all. We’ve seen, you know, real, real, dramatic vote fraud in other states, especially urban areas that have used that same voter registration. So, I’m afraid that they’re going to push it nonetheless, and despite all our success in voter turnout, and despite our increased participation, I’m afraid that they’re going to claim that things are terrible nonetheless, and use that as an excuse to push for something that really opens us up to vote fraud.”

[Gessler said some other stuff about his work with the courts on other election matters, and you can listen here.]

But, please, we all know by now that if fraud were a real issue, the clerks would be worried. All of them may not be right all the time either, but they’re worth listening to.

And in any case, just for the sake of saying it, you don’t need to dig deep to find out that we can have safe election-day voter registration in Colorado. It doesn’t favor one party over another, which wouldn’t be a reason to oppose it, even if it did.

Bottom line for reporters: You can forget about this blog post and get back to real work.