Rocky Mountain Voice

Menu

Tag: Election Administration

Colorado’s dirty voter roll: Final observations
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Colorado’s dirty voter roll: Final observations

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 pu...
Read More
Colorado’s primary audit is underway. Here’s what it checks—and what it doesn’t
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Colorado’s primary audit is underway. Here’s what it checks—and what it doesn’t

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Before Colorado's June 30 primary results become official, counties across Colorado must complete one of the final steps required by state election law: a post-election risk-limiting audit. Mesa County completed its audit Tuesday. "Mesa pulled 115 with zero discrepancies," Mesa County Clerk Bobbie Gross told RMV. The audit compares randomly selected paper ballot cards with how the voting system recorded the votes on them. It does not review every part of the election. What the audit checks Colorado law requires a risk-limiting audit after every primary, general, coordinated, recall and congressional vacancy election. State law describes it as a statistical audit intended to reduce the risk of certifying an incorrect election outc...
Read More
Colorado’s dirty voter roll: The curious case of Apartment A503
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Colorado’s dirty voter roll: The curious case of Apartment A503

By Mike O’Donnell | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Questions about who belongs on Colorado's voter rolls extend beyond duplicate registrations. In Part 6, Mike O'Donnell examines how citizenship verification works, why he believes outside review is limited and how one Aurora apartment address became the most unusual pattern he encountered while reviewing Colorado's public voter roll. Noncitizen Registrants The very first question on the Colorado Voter Registration Form asks whether an application is a U.S. citizen or not. The answer to this first question is required, although if someone “forgets” to answer it, then because they also sign the declaration at the bottom of page 1, they are nonetheless presumed to be a U.S. citizen. An AI...
Read More
Colorado’s dirty voter roll: When one registration becomes two
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

Colorado’s dirty voter roll: When one registration becomes two

By Mike O’Donnell | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice A voter registration is intended to identify one eligible voter. In Part 5, Mike O'Donnell shares examples he flagged during a manual review of more than 412,000 Colorado voter records that he says appear to show duplicate registrations created by small differences in names and other identifying information. Duplicated Voter Registrations The vast number of new registrants added to the Colorado voter roll each year are added automatically. The Department of Revenue is required to electronically report information on “each unregistered elector or person eligible to preregister who applies for the issuance, renewal, or correction of a Colorado driver's license or identification card and who provides documentation of ...
Read More
Colorado immediately assessed Trump’s election order. USPS defended its proposal. A court blocked key parts.
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Colorado immediately assessed Trump’s election order. USPS defended its proposal. A court blocked key parts.

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Colorado election officials said they diverted staff to evaluate President Trump's executive order while 2026 preparations were already underway. USPS said the proposal formalizes election-mail practices it has recommended for years. The dispute has now moved to the appeals courts. Colorado election officials told a federal court they began evaluating changes to the state's election systems almost immediately after President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to overhaul parts of federal election administration.  In sworn filings, they said the order required them to divert staff time to analyze how new federal citizenship verification and ballot-mail procedures would interact with the state's syste...
Read More
Colorado’s dirty voter roll: Where the ballots go
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Colorado’s dirty voter roll: Where the ballots go

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,...
Read More
Colorado’s dirty voter roll: Getting off isn’t so easy
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

Colorado’s dirty voter roll: Getting off isn’t so easy

By Mike O’Donnell | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Getting onto Colorado's voter rolls is only half the story. In Part 2, Mike O'Donnell examines how names come off the rolls—and why he argues the current process often leaves outdated registrations behind. Centenarian Registrants in Colorado The 2026 World Population Review estimates that there are 890 centenarians (people aged 100 or older) currently living in Colorado.  According to the public Colorado voter roll, the state is home to 1,569 centenarians. Different local news sources identify that three 109 year old individuals potentially and currently share the title of the oldest Coloradan alive today. But according to the public Colorado voter roll, there are thirty-four registrants who are older, t...
Read More
Colorado’s dirty voter roll: Getting on is the easy part
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

Colorado’s dirty voter roll: Getting on is the easy part

By Mike O’Donnell | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice I’ve spent the last few months digging deeply into the Colorado voter roll from all sorts of different angles and although politicians of a certain party and their supporters are quick to parrot that Colorado exemplifies the “gold standard” of election integrity, that very definitely does NOT appear to be the case after a close examination of Colorado’s voter roll, the rightful starting point for any such assessment of the quality of election integrity in this or any other state. A closing line from the Eagles' 1976 hit song ‘Hotel California’ seems to be the most appropriate way to summarize the apparent philosophy behind the approach taken by Colorado’s legislature and the current Secretary of State when it comes to the...
Read More
Colorado rebuilt how it votes twice. Its federal plan never caught up.
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Colorado rebuilt how it votes twice. Its federal plan never caught up.

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold has called the state's switch to mail-in voting a transformation of democracy. The federal election plan Colorado keeps on file describes an election system mostly built around precinct polling places. Both come from the state. One appeared in a 2023 news release celebrating the 10th anniversary of Colorado's vote-by-mail law.  The other appears in Colorado's official Help America Vote Act State Plan, which has not been updated since 2008 despite two major changes to how Coloradans vote and register. The issue surfaced through a HAVA complaint filed in February by Highlands Ranch resident Michael Cahoon and Wisconsin election researcher Peter Bernegger. At the May 11 hearing, they we...
Read More
Media Ignores Questions Surrounding California Vote Counting as Familiar Patterns Reappear
No Comments
The Federalist, Approved, Commentary, National

Media Ignores Questions Surrounding California Vote Counting as Familiar Patterns Reappear

By: Chris Bray | Commentary, The Federalist Legacy media are insisting that there’s no evidence of fraud or cheating in California’s recent primary elections. It’s obviously not true. Legacy media don’t describe. They exist to prevent description, corralling and deflecting. In the famous description from Iowahawk, “Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.” Four states held primary elections on June 9, and on the morning of June 10, they were either ahead in their count or about as far along in their count of ballots as California, which held its primaries on June 2. These screenshots from live election results at the NBC News website are both from Wednesday morning at 9:30 PT: NBC NewsImage CreditScreenshot NBC ...
Read More