By Mike O’Donnell | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice
Getting on and getting off the voter rolls were the first two questions. In Part 3, Mike O’Donnell turns to where Colorado voter data and ballots go next—through ERIC, out-of-state mailing addresses and overseas voting rules he argues deserve closer scrutiny.
The Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC)
ERIC is a nonprofit membership-based organization currently supported by twenty-six states, including Colorado. Member states share detailed voter rolls and DMV information with ERIC.
Colorado taxpayers pay around $50,000 a year for their membership in ERIC and the (alleged) primary benefit to the state is that ERIC monitors NCOAs that they share with the Colorado Secretary of State although, as noted above, apparently not always consistently.
ERIC is also charged with identifying any Colorado registrants who are registered and voting in other states.
Because ERIC is a 501(C)3 entity, copies of their tax returns are publicly available.
Their 2023 tax return (they don’t file returns on a very timely basis) highlights that membership states paid a total of $1,605,480 to ERIC for their services that year, and ERIC spent $502,212 for salaries (three senior personnel and a junior), $93,389 (only!) on technology, $339,505 on legal fees (with a fancy DC law firm), and $220,322 on lobbying activities in 2022 (who do they lobby and why?).
ERIC made a profit of $152,379 in 2023 and held $1,350,744 in cash at the end of that year.
Colorado Registrants with Out-of-State or Out-of-County Mailing Addresses
As a vote-by-mail state, everyone with an active status on the voter roll will automatically receive a ballot in the mail each election cycle. Everyone is required to register using the street address of their primary, permanent residence in Colorado but because the U.S. Postal Service no longer delivers mail to physical addresses in many rural and mountain communities, registrants have the option of adding a mailing address to their record in case they prefer or are forced to receive their ballot at some other address.
The public Colorado voter roll shows that 327,090 active status registrants (around 8.0%) receive a ballot at a mailing address they have chosen for themselves.
The vast majority of Colorado ballots stay within Colorado but 30,306 are sent to out-of-state addresses and 21,259 have international mailing addresses.
Numerically, most out-of-state ballots go to Colorado registrants apparently temporarily residing in California (3,582), Texas (3,089), New York (1,629), Arizona (1,580), Virginia (1,453), Florida (1,438) and North Carolina (1,020). No other state receives more than a thousand Colorado ballots.
If this 9% rate carries across to all 30,306 active status Colorado registrants getting their ballots mailed to addresses in other states, it seems possible that at least 2,728 Colorado ballots are being mailed to people (like Oprah Winfrey) who don’t appear to be permanently resident in Colorado.
Colorado registrants with international mailing addresses are covered under the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA).
Anyone who adds an international mailing address to their registration record on the Colorado voter roll immediately becomes subject to UOCAVA. The Colorado Secretary of State is required to “establish an electronic transmission through which a covered voter may apply for and receive voter registration materials, ballots, and other information”.
UOCAVA was originally created to allow military personnel and their families who were temporarily absent from a home state, to vote electronically in home state elections. However, the vast majority of the 21,259 active status registrants in Colorado with international mailing addresses don’t appear to have any military connections whatsoever. They are mostly U.S. citizens who are temporarily living, working or studying abroad although some are certainly U.S. citizens who have chosen to permanently reside in a foreign country.
Just as with the self-designation of being homeless, this is another major vulnerability with the Colorado voter roll because ANY registrant can add a real or imagined international mailing address to their registration record, and gain access to e-voting.
Because the U.S. Postal Service doesn’t serve as an intermediary for UOCAVA registrants, and nothing is ever physically transmitted to these registrants, they could potentially remain on the Colorado voter roll FOREVER with an international mailing address, irrespective of whether the international mailing address they are using is real and irrespective of wherever they may currently be living.
The Colorado Secretary of State doesn’t seem interested in collecting any sort of information about a registrant who chooses to have an international mailing address although it would be a relatively simple process to require someone to periodically reaffirm that the international mailing address attached to their registration record is still current. It would also be useful (and interesting) to know which Colorado registrants have permanently moved to a foreign nation. But no. Too much trouble. Too much work.
At the very minimum, requiring some sort of verification that an international mailing address is a legitimate address (utility bill, student ID, lease, beer coaster, etc.), seems a reasonable thing to ask for but I suppose doing so is analogous to requiring a form of voter ID, which would be a nonstarter for the Colorado Secretary of State because she has no real interest in ensuring that elections in Colorado operate fairly as well as freely.
A registrant with an international mailing address doesn’t even ever have to have lived in Colorado. They just need to establish some sort of tie to the state.
According to statute 1-8.3-106: “an overseas voter who is eligible to vote in this state shall use and shall be assigned to the voting precinct of the address of the last place of residence of the voter in this state, or, in the case of … an overseas voter who was born outside the United States … the address of the last place of residence in this state of the parent or legal guardian of the voter.”
In randomly reviewing and checking international addresses used by active status Colorado registrants, it appears that more than a few of the addresses seem to be either unlikely or nonexistent.
Ironically, although the Secretary of State won’t consider county assessor records or pretty much any other source other than the U.S, Postal Service to begin the process of verifying that someone is still a resident of Colorado, when it comes to someone claiming that they are temporarily or permanently living overseas, just like someone claiming to be homeless, the Secretary of State believes everything anyone says. No questions asked.
Some of the more obvious anomalies evident when quickly scanning some of the international mailing addresses attached to active status Colorado registrants, ignoring for a moment all those listing backpacker hotels and other short term stay facilities, are as follows:
- Four active status registrants have identified as their international mailing country the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) rather than the Republic of Korea (South Korea). If these four registrants don’t know the difference between these two nations, do those registrants even exist?
- Two active status registrants have mailing addresses in Sudan, one at the U.S. embassy in Juba and another in Khartoum. This notwithstanding the fact that the U.S. embassy was abandoned in April 2023 and all U.S. citizens reportedly evacuated at that time.
- One active status registrant has a mailing address in Mali even though Mali has banned all U.S. citizens from entering the country in response to the U.S. banning all Mali nationals from entering the U.S.
- Two active status registrants have mailing addresses in Iran, one in Syria, one in Afghanistan, and one in Havana, Cuba. These all seem unlikely given current geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and these nations.
- One active status registrant has as their full international mailing address “Sydney, Australia.” (Sydney’s population is only about 5.6 million.)
- Seven active status registrants have mailing addresses in Russia and one in Belarus despite the U.S. State Department’s strict “Do Not Travel” advisories for both nations.
Let me put paid to the rumor that Colorado registrants of a particular political party are taking advantage of the international mailing address vulnerability associated with the Colorado voter roll.
It is purely a coincidence that 53.1% of all the active status Colorado registrants with international mailing addresses are registered Democrats.
Mike O’Donnell is a small business advocate, nonprofit executive and economic development leader based in Kirk, Colorado. He currently serves as Executive Director of Prairie Rose Development Corp., a mission-driven lender supporting underserved entrepreneurs across the state.
Editor’s note: This is Part 3 of a five-part guest commentary series examining Colorado’s voter registration system and voter roll. Read Part 1: Getting on is the easy part and Part 2: Getting off isn’t so easy. In Part 4, Mike O’Donnell turns to what happens after ballots are mailed: the chain of custody from mailbox to ballot box and the safeguards he argues deserve closer scrutiny. Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Rocky Mountain Voice, but we support the constitutional right of authors to express those opinions.