Why it's a bad idea to explain how you'd cheat the election system, especially if you're CO's Secretary of State

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by: Jason Salzman

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Secretary of State Wayne Williams.

Appearing on KNUS 710-AM Oct. 22, Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams explained to host Chuck Bonniwell and co-host Julie Hayden how he’d commit election fraud, if Williams were a bad guy, an “unethical Democrat,” as Boniwell put it.

Bonniwell: What would you do if you were a nefarious person trying to cheat the Colorado System? …This is what I would do. I’m not going to. I’m not saying I would do it. But if I were an unethical Democrat trying to rig the system, what would you tell them? How would you do it? You wouldn’t do it, but just to help [inaudible]. What would you do to corrupt the system?

Williams: If I were advising someone, it would not be through the system of online voter registration, because you got to have a driver’s license for that. The easiest way to do that in Colorado is you go in with a non-verifiable ID, a utility bill, and register to vote using that. And you cast a ballot with that. That’s why I think we need photo ID. I have testified asking the legislature to pass photo ID when I was a county commissioner, when I was a county clerk, when I was secretary of state. And they’ve never done it.

Williams said 50 Colorado voters, who registered and voted same day, later did return a post card from the address provided, raising questions about who they were and where they went. But this is light years away from proving that fraud was committed, and it’s consistent with how many citizens live. That is, they move a lot.

In fact, voter fraud has not been shown to be an almost nonexistent problemin states like Colorado that don’t require photo idea. A recent Loyala study gives you the details. In the wake of Trump’s accusations about voter fraud, media outlets across the country have confirmed that voter fraud is a nonissue in the U.S.

And Williams didn’t discuss the flip side, namely that photo ID laws stop legitimate voters from casting ballots. In nine states that passed such laws, it’s estimated that over 3 million voters will be affected. That’s the real issue here.

If you look into it (I did here), you know it’s really hard for many Colorado citizens to obtain a photo ID, and a photo ID law would almost certainly stop many folks from voting.

To his credit, Williams went on to say on air that Colorado does a good job at preventing election fraud, and he’s told other media outlets election fraud is not a problem in Colorado.

In light of all this, it seems that, if you’re Colorado’s secretary of state, and you’re asked how to commit voter fraud, your fact-based PR helper, Lynn Bartels, should whisper in your ear, “Don’t explain how almost no one does it! Say, it’s a non-issue, and tell the conservative radio hosts to focus on encouraging everyone to vote!”

12 thoughts on “Why it’s a bad idea to explain how you’d cheat the election system, especially if you’re CO’s Secretary of State”

MichaelBowman says:

October 27, 2016 at 1:59 pm

But if I were an unethical Democrat trying to rig the system, what would you tell them? How would you do it?

Has Caldera switched parties?

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1. gaf says:
  
  October 27, 2016 at 6:54 pm
  
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Moderatus says:

October 27, 2016 at 3:53 pm

You have to know the mind of the enemy. I guarantee you there will be fraud this election.

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1. BlueCat says:
  
  October 27, 2016 at 7:01 pm
  
  That would require" you" having a clue and a couple of IQ points.
  
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2. gaf says:
  
  October 27, 2016 at 7:07 pm
  
  And I can guarantee that the kind of election fraud that can be avoided by photo ID will be extremely rare (31 possible cases out of 1 billion votes in a recent study), while the number of eligible citizens who are denied a vote because of the barrier of getting that document will be large.
  
  Wayne Williams, as he says, has always argued for photo ID. I have had that conversation with him as a Commissioner, as the Clerk, and as SOS. He never changes his position despite the evidence, and he always dismisses the overwhelming evidence that the barrier of getting a photo ID is a problem for eligible citizens.
  
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  1. BlueCat says:
    
    October 27, 2016 at 7:19 pm
    
    Because it has nothing to do with a real problem. It's all about voter suppression. Sometimes Rs even slip up and admit they have a better chance of winning in a particular area because their voter suppression worked so well. It's so obvious even they have trouble keeping up the pretense.
    
    Not modster, though. He’s such a sap he really believes this stuff and that a bus could pull up to, say, an Arapahoe County polling place, unload its ineligible voters not on the rolls and the election officials, always from both parties, would let them vote. And their votes would count. He’ll believe anything the overlords feed him.
    
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3. MichaelBowman says:
  
  October 27, 2016 at 8:11 pm
  
  I'm guessing that if any one of us chose to roam around in your head we'd do so with few impediments to our movements.
  
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4. DawnPatrol says:
  
  October 28, 2016 at 11:15 am
  
  You and your ilk are most certainly my enemy; however, you lack any sort of mind to know. Fear, hatred, hyper-emotionalism, self-loathing, bitterness, grievance, paranoia and endless victim-hood are your stocks in trade. Nothing else.
  
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  1. Duke Cox says:
    
    October 28, 2016 at 1:04 pm
    
    Um…DP?…you left out greed….
    
    just sayin'
    
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Zappatero says:

October 27, 2016 at 8:34 pm

Another Moran/Republican from the Springs? We've got 'em by the boatload here.

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mamajama55 says:

October 28, 2016 at 6:47 am

Williams is promoting the GOP's Crosscheck program to disenfranchise millions of voters nationwide. It won't work in Colorado, because we vote early by mail, so if we don't get our ballots by Halloween, we know something's wrong, but in states with little early voting and polling places vulnerable to partisan selective shutdown, making hundreds of thousands of voters ineligible could decide elections.

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1. BlueCat says:
  
  October 28, 2016 at 10:29 am
  
  And it's so much easier to do than figuring out a way to appeal to minorities without offending the monster base that's escaped their control ever since the Tea Party, now morphed into Trumpians, turned on the GOP establishment as the old tame Moral Majority never did.
  
  They have arrived at the logical destination of a journey that started with southern strategy's use of racial hate and fear. We've watched it progress through the Reagan era of getting workers to vote against their own economic interests by painting the unions that brought them into the middle class in the first place, "welfare queens" and the government as the enemy, by fanning the "Moral Majority" fears of women and gays in a world of social change, by fanning the fear of non-white immigrants, by nurturing post 9/11 xenophobia directed even against our oldest European allies (remember freedom fries) and blanket intolerance of Muslims.
  
  We've witnessed their hysterical response to a black man in the WH, painting as a traitor any R pol who would dare to support anything connected with him, even if it came straight out of their own think tanks, tolerating when not overtly embracing every possible conspiracy theory against him and all Dems, making obstruction a moral duty because the opposition is not just mistaken but evil.
  
  Finally we've arrived at the end point, a base the GOP has been creating over all these decades that has made Trump and his out of control id the party standard bearer. Is he really so different from any member of the so called Freedom Caucus, outside of a few quirks like not particularly hating gays? Is he really any worse than a Pence or a Gingrich besides the lack of even the tiniest fig leaf?
  
  No matter how many times they get their wrists slapped, expect the RNC and every state Republican party to doggedly pursue every voter suppression scheme they can lay their hands on. It's what they've got left now that the monster is completely off the leash, demographics continue to change to their disadvantage and they are on their way to their third presidential election loss in a row.
  
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