By Mike O’Donnell | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice
After six installments examining Colorado's voter registration system, Mike O'Donnell closes his series with additional observations from his review of the public voter roll and his final thoughts on what he believes should change to strengthen election integrity in Colorado.
Errata
By wandering through the public Colorado voter roll and grouping registrants by addresses OR by accessing the powerful (and free) ELLY program to identify potential anomalies, there are plenty of things that need to be fixed or cleaned up on Colorado’s voter roll.
And although the Secretary of State makes it more than challenging than it needs to be to clean up the voter roll, it doesn’t hurt to ask questions of county clerks or publicize things that seem just a little ‘off’.
That is what I have been attempting to do with this paper.
Here are some other random observations about the public Colorado voter roll, in no particular order, and there are many more that could be added to this list:
- Eight active status registrants have identified their primary residential address as the the Weld County DMV. Seven get their ballots mailed elsewhere and one has his ballot mailed to the DMV. Presumably all are homeless and frequently return there.
- Fifteen registrants have a middle name and a last name but no first name. (?)
- Fifty-four active status registrants have as a primary residence address a business address, the FedEx Mail Box Express location on Chambers Road in Denver. Two get their ballots mailed elsewhere (one to Arizona). The rest collect their mail there.
- Two hundred and seventeen registrants have a first name that is identical to their middle name. (?)
- Twenty-one centenarian registrants self-identify as non-binary.
- Seventy-four registrants have no first or middle name, just a last name. (You can legally change your name to a single name, removing superfluous first and middle name monikers, following in the footsteps of rich and famous role models like Prince, Madonna, Cher, Beyoncé, Shakira, and Frankenstein.)
- Eight active status registrants have as their primary address the nation’s premier family friendly nudist resort in Littleton, Colorado. Based on the addresses, one appears to be the on-site manager. The other seven, several in their 70s, must live year round in the campground area. (Such fortitude! My hat, etc., is off to them!)
FINIS
Election integrity starts with a clean voter roll and, sadly, Colorado’s voter roll is both bloated and poorly maintained, seemingly purposely so. The current Colorado Secretary of State and others in her party, continually parrot that Colorado exemplifies the “gold standard” of election integrity. It does not, and repeating that lie over and over again doesn’t make it true.
Keeping the voter roll free of non-resident or otherwise ineligible registrants doesn’t seem to have been a priority for a Secretary of State consumed by such a fierce hatred of President Trump that it has prevented her from doing the job she was elected to do.
The legacy she is leaving behind as her term in office concludes is one marked by a bloated and dirty voter roll, taxpayer waste, and exploitable vulnerabilities that have made elections in Colorado even less secure than they were when she first came into office.
Colorado’s dirty voter roll series:
Part 1: Getting on is the easy part — How names get onto Colorado’s voter rolls.
Part 2: Getting off isn’t so easy — Why outdated registrations can remain.
Part 3: Where the ballots go — Mailing addresses, ERIC and overseas ballots.
Part 4: Following the ballot — Chain of custody after ballots leave election offices.
Part 5: When one registration becomes two — Duplicate registrations and voter records.
Part 6: The curious case of Apartment A503 — Citizenship questions, DOJ litigation and one unusual address.
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 concludes Mike O’Donnell’s seven-part guest commentary series examining Colorado’s voter registration system and voter roll through his review of publicly available records and other cited sources. 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.