The same people who would prefer us not to own anything in the near future also don’t embrace the concept of one person, one vote. They prefer that in the next world, an “educated” minority will always be able to “outvote” an indifferent majority.
The founders of RadicalxChange, a group that also embraces both of these principles, has been “consulting” with the ruling majority Democrat Party in Colorado since 2019 so it is no surprise that Colorado is slowly embracing both of these comrade-Lenin-inspired tenets as well.
Recent legislation and the imposition of increasingly regressive “fees” in Colorado that inequitably impact poor and middle income households, are the first step towards a property-less future. Universal voting by mail utilizing a poorly maintained voter roll is the first step towards ensuring that the votes of legitimate Colorado residents are marginalized.
Colorado is one of only a handful of states in the nation that mails every active voter on the voter roll a ballot each election cycle. No exceptions. Having as many active voters on the voter roll as possible has become the defining statistic by which the Colorado Secretary of State measures her worth. Accordingly, she puts little effort into ensuring that the voter roll is clean and up to date. Quantity is more important than quality.
According to a recent report by Moody’s Analytics, 248,150 people moved away from Colorado in the most recent twelve month period, around 4.3% of the state’s population. Some 264,680 people moved into the state at the same time so, births and deaths notwithstanding, Colorado gained 16,530 new residents last year.
When someone moves into the state and gets a Colorado driver’s license or ID, which usually happens within 90 days, they are automatically added to the voter roll. When someone moves out of the state, they remain on the voter roll. If they happen to let their county clerk know they are moving (a rare occurrence), or if someone notices that they filed a permanent change of address form with the post office, or if a mailed-out ballot is returned undeliverable, that voter’s status on the voter roll will be changed to inactive and they won’t automatically be sent a ballot at the next election. Until then, ballots keep getting mailed out.
Federal law requires inactive voters to remain on state voter rolls for two presidential election cycles before they can be removed. Given Moody’s estimate that 248,150 Coloradans relocated to other states in the most recent twelve month period then it might not be too much of a stretch to assume that somewhere between four- (best case) to eight- (worst case) times that number of out of state movers would be inactive on the Colorado voter roll.
But no, that isn’t the case.
As of December 1st 2022, there were 3,839,814 active Colorado voters and 534,344 inactive voters.
Less than two-times the number of people who left the state last year are currently inactive on the Colorado voter roll. Ought that number to be closer to one million (4 x 248,150) or one-anda- half million (6 x 248,150)? If so, there could be as many as 954,616 extra active voters on the Colorado voter roll still receiving ballots each election cycle.
When the Secretary of State doesn’t inactivate a former resident and sends them a ballot even after they move, it is possible that bad actors might secure and repurpose those wayward ballots to potentially impact election outcomes at the margin, a necessary step in achieving the broader goals of a group like RadicalxChange and their charges.
Anecdotal evidence already suggests that Colorado doesn’t always process permanent change of address notices filed with the post office, and certainly not everyone who receives a ballot addressed to a previous resident at their address, returns it undeliverable.
To “assist” the Colorado Secretary of State supplement her inadequate monitoring of the voter roll, Colorado became one of the 31 (soon to be 29) member states that belong to the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a non-profit organization whose mission is “to assist states improve the accuracy of America’s voter rolls and increase access to voter registration for eligible citizens”. ERIC was formed in 2012 with assistance from The Pew Charitable Trusts.
The author wished to test whether ERIC was a useful tool for the state. It is relatively easy to do that in Colorado because there is no absentee ballot process and if a resident is absent from their primary Colorado residence come election time because of work, study, travel or some other reason (no questions asked), they can modify their voter record to add a new mailing address.
Coloradans are apparently voracious travelers because the voter roll shows that 39,841 voters get their ballots at addresses in other states and another 15,929 have mailing addresses outside the United States (including Afghanistan, Russia, the People’s Republic of China, and even (?) North Korea).
There are no expiration dates associated with Colorado voter mailing addresses so if a resident forgets to change or delete a mailing address after being temporarily absent from the state, they might remain on the Colorado voter roll with a non-Colorado mailing address in perpetuity, even if they no longer have any ties to the state.
Among all of the Colorado out-of-state ballot mailings, 982 go to New Mexico addresses and 824 go to Kansas addresses.
New Mexico, like Colorado, is a member of ERIC so none of the Coloradans with New Mexico addresses should be registered to vote in that state. Kansas is not part of ERIC so it is possible that some of the Coloradans getting ballots in Kansas could also be registered to vote in Kansas.
A free public website, VoteRef.com, is dedicated to ensuring transparent, accurate and fair elections in the United States. It provides public access to official government data pertaining to elections, including voter registration rolls. The goal of VoteRef.com is to encourage greater voter participation in all fifty states. The web site currently contains voter roll data for 31 states (not all ERIC states) although the site intends to eventually have voter data for every state.
The author individually checked the VoteRef.com website for the name, year of birth and address of each of the 982 Coloradans receiving ballots at New Mexico mailing addresses (there were more Democrats than Republicans) and each of the 824 Coloradans receiving ballots at Kansas mailing addresses (more Republicans than Democrats) to see if any voters showed up as registered in both states.
More than 22% of Coloradans with New Mexico mailing addresses appear to be also registered to vote in New Mexico, a fellow ERIC member state with Colorado. Almost 20% of the Coloradans getting ballots in Kansas appear to be also registered to vote in Kansas.
The author also accidentally noticed that the daughter and son of one Colorado voter were listed as active voters on the New Mexico voter roll but the mother was not. All three had their Colorado ballots mailed to the same address in New Mexico. When the author searched for the mother’s name, he sadly found an obituary for her from February 2021. New Mexico appears to have removed her from their voter roll after her untimely death. She nonetheless remains as an active voter in Colorado.
One New Mexico voter with the same name and same mailing address as a Colorado voter had a slightly different birth year (they were one year younger in New Mexico). This person wasn’t counted as registered in both states, although they likely were.
Both the New Mexico and Kansas groups contained small numbers of college students (based on their addresses) who were registered to vote in both states. Active “Get Out the Vote” campaigns on college campuses provide both incentives and pressure for student to register to vote and may be the reason why fifteen students at Fort Lewis College in Durango seem to be registered voters in both Colorado and New Mexico.
Colorado and Kansas once had an arrangement whereby they shared voter information across state lines to avoid duplicates such as the ones observed through this study although that pact was dissolved when Colorado joined ERIC and Kansas didn’t.
Nonetheless, based on this analysis, it appears that Colorado gets nothing from being a member of ERIC and the state appears to be worse off, when it comes to voter roll quality, by being a member of ERIC than not being a member of ERIC.
Building on the observations reported here, if around 20% of the active Colorado voters with out-of-state mailing addresses are also registered to vote in the states where they receive their Colorado ballots, then Colorado’s voter roll contains around 8,000 odd individuals who potentially could be double-dipper-voters each federal election cycle.
There is so much work to be done cleaning up Colorado’s voter roll. Comparing voters on Colorado’s voter roll with registration data in VoteRef.com isn’t difficult to do. It is a little tedious but not overly time consuming. Staff at the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office could easily do it themselves should they choose to do so.
But they don’t.
Article prepared and researched by Mike O’Donnell, a part-time economist, naturalized U.S. citizen, and Colorado resident who is concerned about Colorado’s voter roll.
Contact email:
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Cell phone: 719-751.3470
The same people who would prefer us not to own anything in the near future also don’t embrace the concept of one person, one vote. They prefer that in the next world, an “educated” minority will always be able to “outvote” an indifferent majority.
The founders of RadicalxChange, a group that also embraces both of these principles, has been “consulting” with the ruling majority Democrat Party in Colorado since 2019 so it is no surprise that Colorado is slowly embracing both of these comrade-Lenin-inspired tenets as well.
Recent legislation and the imposition of increasingly regressive “fees” in Colorado that inequitably impact poor and middle income households, are the first step towards a property-less future. Universal voting by mail utilizing a poorly maintained voter roll is the first step towards ensuring that the votes of legitimate Colorado residents are marginalized.
Colorado is one of only a handful of states in the nation that mails every active voter on the voter roll a ballot each election cycle. No exceptions. Having as many active voters on the voter roll as possible has become the defining statistic by which the Colorado Secretary of State measures her worth. Accordingly, she puts little effort into ensuring that the voter roll is clean and up to date. Quantity is more important than quality.
According to a recent report by Moody’s Analytics, 248,150 people moved away from Colorado in the most recent twelve month period, around 4.3% of the state’s population. Some 264,680 people moved into the state at the same time so, births and deaths notwithstanding, Colorado gained 16,530 new residents last year.
When someone moves into the state and gets a Colorado driver’s license or ID, which usually happens within 90 days, they are automatically added to the voter roll. When someone moves out of the state, they remain on the voter roll. If they happen to let their county clerk know they are moving (a rare occurrence), or if someone notices that they filed a permanent change of address form with the post office, or if a mailed-out ballot is returned undeliverable, that voter’s status on the voter roll will be changed to inactive and they won’t automatically be sent a ballot at the next election. Until then, ballots keep getting mailed out.
Federal law requires inactive voters to remain on state voter rolls for two presidential election cycles before they can be removed. Given Moody’s estimate that 248,150 Coloradans relocated to other states in the most recent twelve month period then it might not be too much of a stretch to assume that somewhere between four- (best case) to eight- (worst case) times that number of out of state movers would be inactive on the Colorado voter roll.
But no, that isn’t the case.
As of December 1st 2022, there were 3,839,814 active Colorado voters and 534,344 inactive voters.
Less than two-times the number of people who left the state last year are currently inactive on the Colorado voter roll. Ought that number to be closer to one million (4 x 248,150) or one-anda- half million (6 x 248,150)? If so, there could be as many as 954,616 extra active voters on the Colorado voter roll still receiving ballots each election cycle.
When the Secretary of State doesn’t inactivate a former resident and sends them a ballot even after they move, it is possible that bad actors might secure and repurpose those wayward ballots to potentially impact election outcomes at the margin, a necessary step in achieving the broader goals of a group like RadicalxChange and their charges.
Anecdotal evidence already suggests that Colorado doesn’t always process permanent change of address notices filed with the post office, and certainly not everyone who receives a ballot addressed to a previous resident at their address, returns it undeliverable.
To “assist” the Colorado Secretary of State supplement her inadequate monitoring of the voter roll, Colorado became one of the 31 (soon to be 29) member states that belong to the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a non-profit organization whose mission is “to assist states improve the accuracy of America’s voter rolls and increase access to voter registration for eligible citizens”. ERIC was formed in 2012 with assistance from The Pew Charitable Trusts.
The author wished to test whether ERIC was a useful tool for the state. It is relatively easy to do that in Colorado because there is no absentee ballot process and if a resident is absent from their primary Colorado residence come election time because of work, study, travel or some other reason (no questions asked), they can modify their voter record to add a new mailing address.
Coloradans are apparently voracious travelers because the voter roll shows that 39,841 voters get their ballots at addresses in other states and another 15,929 have mailing addresses outside the United States (including Afghanistan, Russia, the People’s Republic of China, and even (?) North Korea).
There are no expiration dates associated with Colorado voter mailing addresses so if a resident forgets to change or delete a mailing address after being temporarily absent from the state, they might remain on the Colorado voter roll with a non-Colorado mailing address in perpetuity, even if they no longer have any ties to the state.
Among all of the Colorado out-of-state ballot mailings, 982 go to New Mexico addresses and 824 go to Kansas addresses.
New Mexico, like Colorado, is a member of ERIC so none of the Coloradans with New Mexico addresses should be registered to vote in that state. Kansas is not part of ERIC so it is possible that some of the Coloradans getting ballots in Kansas could also be registered to vote in Kansas.
A free public website, VoteRef.com, is dedicated to ensuring transparent, accurate and fair elections in the United States. It provides public access to official government data pertaining to elections, including voter registration rolls. The goal of VoteRef.com is to encourage greater voter participation in all fifty states. The web site currently contains voter roll data for 31 states (not all ERIC states) although the site intends to eventually have voter data for every state.
The author individually checked the VoteRef.com website for the name, year of birth and address of each of the 982 Coloradans receiving ballots at New Mexico mailing addresses (there were more Democrats than Republicans) and each of the 824 Coloradans receiving ballots at Kansas mailing addresses (more Republicans than Democrats) to see if any voters showed up as registered in both states.
The included table summarizes the findings.
More than 22% of Coloradans with New Mexico mailing addresses appear to be also registered to vote in New Mexico, a fellow ERIC member state with Colorado. Almost 20% of the Coloradans getting ballots in Kansas appear to be also registered to vote in Kansas.
The author also accidentally noticed that the daughter and son of one Colorado voter were listed as active voters on the New Mexico voter roll but the mother was not. All three had their Colorado ballots mailed to the same address in New Mexico. When the author searched for the mother’s name, he sadly found an obituary for her from February 2021. New Mexico appears to have removed her from their voter roll after her untimely death. She nonetheless remains as an active voter in Colorado.
One New Mexico voter with the same name and same mailing address as a Colorado voter had a slightly different birth year (they were one year younger in New Mexico). This person wasn’t counted as registered in both states, although they likely were.
Both the New Mexico and Kansas groups contained small numbers of college students (based on their addresses) who were registered to vote in both states. Active “Get Out the Vote” campaigns on college campuses provide both incentives and pressure for student to register to vote and may be the reason why fifteen students at Fort Lewis College in Durango seem to be registered voters in both Colorado and New Mexico.
Colorado and Kansas once had an arrangement whereby they shared voter information across state lines to avoid duplicates such as the ones observed through this study although that pact was dissolved when Colorado joined ERIC and Kansas didn’t.
Nonetheless, based on this analysis, it appears that Colorado gets nothing from being a member of ERIC and the state appears to be worse off, when it comes to voter roll quality, by being a member of ERIC than not being a member of ERIC.
Building on the observations reported here, if around 20% of the active Colorado voters with out-of-state mailing addresses are also registered to vote in the states where they receive their Colorado ballots, then Colorado’s voter roll contains around 8,000 odd individuals who potentially could be double-dipper-voters each federal election cycle.
There is so much work to be done cleaning up Colorado’s voter roll. Comparing voters on Colorado’s voter roll with registration data in VoteRef.com isn’t difficult to do. It is a little tedious but not overly time consuming. Staff at the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office could easily do it themselves should they choose to do so.
But they don’t.
Article prepared and researched by Mike O’Donnell, a part-time economist, naturalized U.S. citizen, and Colorado resident who is concerned about Colorado’s voter roll.
Contact email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Cell phone: 719-751.3470
