May 10, 2016 03:46 PM UTC

BREAKING: Extensive Fraud Uncovered In Keyser Senate Petitions

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: Marshall Zelinger’s story is up. It is without exaggeration one of the most devastating Colorado political news stories we have ever read. Excerpt, needless to say you need to click through and read it in its entirety:

Forged signatures appear on the petition that may have helped former State Rep. Jon Keyser qualify for the U.S. Senate Republican primary ballot…

Denver7 has now confirmed with 10 voters that they did not write their names, addresses and signatures that appear on his petition.

The 10 signatures that voters told Denver7 were forged were collected in Congressional District One, where Keyser was credited with 1,520 valid signatures. If he had turned in fewer than 1,500, he would not have qualified for the primary ballot. [Pols emphasis]…

…”I don’t think this is a liberal stunt, I think it’s backpedalling by the Keyser group to cover their tracks. They got caught and they’re trying to cover it now,” said Niemczyk.

“Do you know who Jon Keyser is?” said Zelinger.

“I do not,” said Niemczyk.

“Do you want to know who he is?” asked Zelinger.

“I do. Probably not for the reasons Jon Keyser wants me to know who he is. I don’t know how anyone could trust you after this,” said Niemczyk.

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BREAKING: #Denver7 confirms w/10 voters their signatures were forged on @Jon_Keyser petitions. More to come. #cosen pic.twitter.com/5Gbm4TfOXg

— Marshall Zelinger (@7Marshall) May 10, 2016

Last week, liberal group ProgressNow Colorado held a news conference to announce petition signatures for GOP U.S. Senate candidate Jon Keyser that were wrongly validated by the Secretary of State’s office–a potentially very serious development for Keyser, after he barely qualified for the ballot via a court challenge. GOP Secretary of State Wayne Williams initially ruled Keyser’s petitions insufficient due to problems with a circulator’s credentials, and in addition, Keyser came perilously close to failing to qualify in several congressional districts including Denver’s CD-1.

And then the story got worse.

One of the CD-1 duplicate signatures wrongly accepted for Keyser’s campaign, a Republican voter in Littleton named Pamela Niemczyk. But on easy visual examination, Niemczyk’s signature on the petition for Senate candidate Jack Graham looked nothing like the signature on the petition for Keyser. Using this information, KMGH-TV reporter Marshall Zelinger went to Niemczyk’s home, and obtained a devastating video of this Republican voter accusing Keyser’s campaign of forging her signature.

In the U.S. Senate race, the last week since ProgressNow Colorado’s presser has mostly been focused on the legal challenges from Robert Blaha and Ryan Frazier–but behind the scenes Zelinger has been working to figure out how many forged signatures we may be talking about. It’s simple reasoning to conclude that, with one fraudulent signature in hand, there must be more. After all, when does something like that only happen once?

Well folks, as it turns out, there’s more. A lot more. We’re waiting for Zelinger’s full reports at 6 and 10PM tonight, but what we can tell you now based on Zelinger’s initial reports is that Jon Keyser’s Senate campaign is now officially on the brink of disaster. Zelinger is reporting at least ten cases now of Republican voters identifying validated Keyser petition signatures as fraudulent.

If that’s true, this is the biggest scandal to impact Colorado Republican electoral politics in many years–far worse than 2010 gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis’ race-ending plagiarism scandal. The implications for Keyser and the high-level Republican operatives he hired to run his petition drive and campaign are nothing short of calamitous. Without any real scrutiny, the extent of the fraud in these petitions a real criminal investigation may uncover could shake the entire Colorado political world to its foundations.

Withdrawing from the race could be just the beginning of Keyser’s problems now. Stay tuned.