March 22, 2012 07:44 PM UTC

Gessler To Homeland Security: Do My Fishing For Me

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Pueblo Chieftain’s Peter Roper reports:

Secretary of State Scott Gessler won’t release the names of the 4,500 people his office has identified who were registered to vote in Colorado but may not be U.S. citizens. Not even to the county clerks who have asked to see the names of those registered in their counties.

“I’m not going to cast a shadow of suspicion over those people until I know whether they registered and voted illegally,” Gessler told The Pueblo Chieftain editorial board Wednesday. “I believe I’m on strong legal ground in not releasing those names.”

That said, Gessler added that he eventually wants the federal Department of Homeland Security to review all Colorado voter registrations to check their citizenship…

This latest move by Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler, asking the federal Department of Homeland Security to verify the status of some 4,500 voters Gessler “believes” may be noncitizens improperly registered to vote could be a political posturing masterstoke–we’ll start by conceding that. We’re not at all sure that DHS will agree to perform these checks, and if they refuse, Gessler can claim that the Obama administration is “blocking” his attempt to verify the citizenship of these voters. Never mind, as we’ve said all along as Gessler has raised these questions without conclusive evidence, that tens of thousands of people became citizens in Colorado in the last few years–easily enough to account for the number Gessler cites.

But as usual, this doesn’t seem to be about actually solving problems, as Roper continues:

Pressed on why he wasn’t providing the 4,500 names to the respective county clerks, Gessler said he doubted they had the legal authority to challenge a voter’s citizenship.

“I’ve asked county clerks what they would do with that information and they said nothing, that they would wait for my office to challenge the voter’s citizenship,” Gessler replied.

Sheila Reiner, the Mesa County clerk and a fellow Republican, had a different recollection. [Pols emphasis] She submitted a written proposal to Gessler’s office saying that if the names were provided, she would send letters to those in Mesa County asking about their citizenship.

You see, there’s nothing preventing county clerks from looking into the possibility of noncitizens being improperly registered to vote. They want the information so they can help. Republican Mesa County Clerk Sheila Reiner has repeatedly offered to assist Secretary of State Gessler in getting to the bottom of this, and Gessler has been the one failing to cooperate with her office.

And now, asking Homeland Security to “verify” something that is in fact easily accounted for, as a segue into them “verifying” every voter in Colorado–a totally ridiculous and inappropriate punting of responsibility–folks, we really get the notion, shared by a growing number of county clerks, that Scott Gessler isn’t interested in a constructive outcome.

Maybe it’s just about the posturing–or a set up for something worse later this year? We just can’t shake the fact that this is the man who gave Gigi Dennis her bright ideas in 2006. And every time a clerk, a Republican clerk, says they’re getting nervous and confused about what Gessler is doing, we become increasingly suspicious that Gessler knows exactly what he’s doing.