A Denver Post column on election legislation designed to keep sending absentee ballots to inactive voter despite previous mail and ballots coming back undeliverable from that address or even the post office program informing the election official that the person has moved.
The
Colorado legislature isn’t helping matters with House Bill 1303, which
has passed both chambers and awaits the governor’s signature. The bill
requires mail ballots be sent to all registered voters, whether they’ve
cast ballots in recent elections or not — and halted when the ballot is
returned or the state learns through other checks that someone has
moved or died.
One critical backstop is the National Change of
Address file maintained by the Postal Service. But in an era in which
snail mail is rapidly losing its relevance, particularly for young
adults, that file is hardly comprehensive. And yet as Pew points out,
“Census numbers from 2009 reveal one in four adults ages 25 to 34
changed residences.”So what happens in homes where, say, a 20-something takes a job in another state? The ballots could just keep on coming.
So despite a voter having passed away or moved out of the state, the absentee ballots will just keep arriving to the same old address, over and over again, much to the chagrin of the new residents of the home. Imagine getting a ballot over and over addressed to someone else and it keeps coming. Democratic politicians and now the election clerks in Colorado are simply harassing legitimate voters at their homes, just asking for absentee voter fraud and mistaken voting, both of which threaten the integrity of the voting
process.
Colorado has some of the best voting laws in the country. It allows, encourages, citizens to become involved in the selection of OUR elected representatives.
Here is Colorado, early voting starts two weeks before election day with voting centers located in convenient location around the state. You can also select to receive mail-in ballots only so there is no reason for anyone to have to leave their home and trek to a polling place on election day.
We still do have problems with voter lines in some locations and we have had horrible election problems in the past. But the Colorado state legislature has been working in a bipartisan fashion to resolve any issues which in anyway restricts any Colorado citizen from voting.
The Colorado voting laws should be a model for other states across the country.
I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
Paul Weyrich, the conservative thinker and strategist whose iron principles, articulate fervor and organization-building skills were instrumental in propelling the right wing of the Republican Party to power and prominence in the 1980s and ’90s