DENVER A legal dispute between Secretary of State Scott Gessler and the clerk and recorder in Denver is drawing national attention.
Gessler, a Republican, sued Denver clerk Debra Johnson, a Democrat, for her plans to send out mail ballots for this falls election to inactive voters people who havent voted since 2008.
On Wednesday, a pair of Democratic congressmen asked the Department of Justice to investigate Gessler, alleging that he is trying to keep people from voting.
No right is mentioned more times in the Constitution than the right to vote, said Rep. Charles Gonzalez, D-Texas, the top Democrat on the House subcommittee that oversees elections. It is the responsibility of every public official to ensure that eligible citizens are not denied that right. Secretary Gessler, instead, has taken steps that could prevent Coloradans civic participation.
Although the 2011 statewide ballot has just one question a tax increase for education theres little mystery about why a local dispute is drawing national scrutiny.
This seems to me that its more political in relation to 2012 than it is anything else, said Rick Palacio, chairman of the Colorado Democratic Party.
Political prognosticators have pegged Colorado as one of the handful of swing states President Barack Obama will need to win. Because Democratic voters have fallen onto the inactive rolls much faster than Republicans, Democrats sense a plot to suppress their voters.
Gessler denies it.
Montezuma County is holding mail elections, and the clerks office plans to follow Gesslers advice and send ballots only to active voters.
But two heavily Democratic counties, Denver and Pueblo, want to send ballots in this all-mail election to every registered voter, active or inactive. Gessler told all county clerks that his reading of state law allows ballots to be sent only to active voters.
Gesslers spokesman, Andrew Cole, said politics have nothing to do with it.
If Douglas County or El Paso County (two GOP strongholds) had come to us and said, We want to mail to inactive voters, we would have had the same answer, because were following the law, Cole said.
Until this year, counties that conducted mail elections had to send ballots to both active and inactive voters. But the Legislature ended the requirement that ballots go to inactive voters as of this summer.
Cole said that if some counties send ballots to everyone and others do not, it could cause an unfair election. Gessler is also worried about the possibility of voter fraud, Cole said.
In Gesslers lawsuit, he asks the judge to confirm that because he is the states chief elections officer, each county clerk is a subordinate officer who has a ministerial duty to obey the order of the secretary even when the clerk disagrees with the interpretation (of the law).
Montezuma County Clerk Carol Tullis was out of the office and unavailable to comment. According Deputy Chief Clerk Kim Percell, more than one-third of registered voters in Montezuma County are listed as inactive. There are 11,500 active registered voters in the county and 6,800 inactive registered voters. When examined based on party affiliation, there are 5,807 active Republic voters in the county, and 2,250 inactive GOP voters. Democrats have 2,800 active voters and 1,800 inactive voters. Unaffiliated voters make up the third party, so to speak, in Montezuma County and boast 2,840 active voters and 2,730 inactive voters.
Statewide, voter registration numbers bear out the Democrats fear that they have more to lose in this fight.
A vigorous voter turnout effort by the Obama campaign brought Democrats to near parity with Republicans in late 2008.
But the ranks of active Democratic voters fell by 161,000 between December 2008 and August 2011, compared to a loss of just 70,000 for active Republican voters. The number of active unaffiliated voters fell by 112,000 between 2008 and last month.
The fracas points out a problem with mail elections, said Alan Franklin, operations director of Progress Now Colorado, a left-leaning group.
Until now, active or inactive status didnt matter much, because everyone showed up at the polls to vote. But some people only vote in presidential elections.
We had so many people on the bench last year. If that is the criteria for switching people to inactive status, it terrifies me, Franklin said.
Franklin planned to deliver more than 3,000 petitions of protest to Gessler on Friday.
The last day to register to vote is Monday. People who are registered but inactive can visit govotecolorado.com to update their status through the third week in October.
Journal Staff Writer Kimberly Benedict contributed to this report.
Reach Joe Hanel at joeh@cortezjournal.com.