By mid-October, a measly total of fourteen voters had actually been removed from the rolls as a result of Gessler's letters. None of those fourteen had voted in past elections.
But the effort to stop fraud wasn't over yet.
Mark Manger
Scott Gessler is at home at the Colorado Secretary of State's office.
Mark Manger
Luis Toro, director of Colorado Ethics Watch.
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Just two weeks before November 6, Gessler announced that he had done yet another check on thousands of potential non-citizens who might be voting. It was the final countdown until election day; many of his critics were appalled that he was still pursuing an anti-fraud crusade that had already come up close to empty.
"The agenda has always been clear, but the path has not been transparent," says Elena Nunez, executive director of Colorado Common Cause, an advocacy group that works on voter rights.
But Gessler, frustrated that the federal government had only given him access to the desired information in August, said he wished he had more time — and that he feared more fraudulent voters would slip through the cracks.
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In a packed room inside the South Metro Chamber of Commerce in December, residents took turns venting as Scott Gessler, flanked by deputy Suzanne Staiert, jotted notes on a white legal pad.
The most common concern? Voter fraud.
"If you're not American, you shouldn't vote," shouted Steven Haworth, who lives in Aurora and was offering public comment as part of Gessler's "election integrity listening tour," during which he and staffers traveled around the state to collect public feedback about the election. "I think you need to purge those voters."
Haworth said that he was a precinct leader who made calls in support of Mitt Romney, and several times encountered registered voters who told him they weren't citizens.
Kaarl Hoopes, an election judge in Commerce City, offered his comments at a meeting in Denver a week later. "I definitely had some concerns about efforts to increase the voter participation of people who had no business voting, who had no right to vote at all," he said. "I really applaud his efforts to clean up the voter rolls to make sure that...people who do not have the right to vote have their name taken off the list."
While Gessler and his aides had spent months responding to criticisms about the secretary of state's alleged intimidation tactics, at these post-election events, he largely fielded complaints that he and county election officials across the state hadn't done enough to prevent and prosecute fraud.
So how much fraud was there?
Jessica Zender, a policy analyst with the Colorado Judicial Branch's Division of Planning and Analysis, says that from 2002 through December 7, 2012, 39 cases were filed tied to the state statute that covers voter fraud, with a total of 48 charges. Of those, sixteen actually led to convictions, with fourteen found guilty and two deferred sentences. The remaining charges were likely dismissed, although, in theory, the cases could still be ongoing. But that's unlikely, as most of the charges were filed before 2011. In fact, all but ten of the 48 charges were filed before 2010 — when Gessler took office.
Gessler notes that in 2010, six people who voted in Colorado and in Kansas were charged with fraud, and he laments that they didn't face serious prosecution. Of his critics, he says, "They say, 'No voter fraud, no voter fraud, no voter fraud!'.... So we point out six instances where people purposely voted in two states at once...and they say, 'It's just six!'"
For critics of Gessler's anti-fraud focus, the numbers show that this is a tiny problem that doesn't deserve the attention it's been given. But Gessler responds that the numbers simply show that our legal and judicial systems aren't set up to effectively detect and punish fraud. "There's a hesitance to prosecute this kind of stuff," he says. "They say there aren't that many prosecutions — [but] that's not the way you measure the issue. You have to do it through a preventative and administrative approach."
As early voting got under way in October, Gessler announced that he had done checks on more voters, leading him to raise the number of suspected non-citizens on the voter rolls to 441. He mailed them letters and sent their names to county clerks.
All told, since he took office, Gessler's non-citizen initiatives have resulted in a total of 518 voters being "canceled" in the voter-registration system for not being citizens. About ninety of those came in the final months of his pre-election cross-checks and letters.
Of the 3,903 potential non-citizens identified last summer, 63 said they were non-citizens and withdrew their names from the roles; twelve of them had voted in previous elections, which meant that twelve people had committed fraud in Colorado and gotten away with it, Gessler staffers said. Still, 3,283 managed to prove that they were citizens or had their citizenship status verified through federal checks. Based on federal records, there are 374 who did not respond and are not citizens, Gessler's staff says.
As a result of his office's work, the voter rolls are cleaner than they have ever been, Gessler insists.
Gessler's critics are waiting for his next move. Will he try to prosecute those he believes committed fraud? Will he push a new rule or legislation that makes it possible for his office to directly purge voters? (Gessler and his staff are quick to point out that the secretary of state's office has never directly removed any voters.)
