Progressives wrote Colorado’s “unmanageable” new voting rules, but Jon Caldara of the center-right Independence Institute reminds voters “they are now the rules of elections in Colorado. They are your new voting rights, so you had better use them. Others certainly will.”

What are these new Colorado voting rights?

Under the new law, our ballots are flung through the mail like grocery-store coupons, whether you want them delivered to you that way or not… ballots in the last election were readily found in trash cans and apartment mail rooms, just ready to be harvested.

But even more disturbing, this new law legalizes moving voters around like chess pieces on Election Day to the district where their vote is most needed. Now a voter who merely “intends” to make a different district his home can vote in that district.

And get this: Any enforcement of “voter fraud,” even if it could be caught, happens after the ballots are all counted and recorded. Under this same-day voter registration law, the vagabond voter is handed a ballot when and where he registers. His ballot goes into the ballot box and there’s no yanking it back out.

As the Democrat-controlled Assembly is not likely to repeal the lax new election laws it passed last year, Caldara says Colorado voters “all have the responsibility to learn about our new voter rights and exercise them fully.”

“Based upon review of 110 recounts conducted following the 2013 General Election on November 5th, 35 local races and eight local issues were decided by one vote or through breaking a tie.”  

Just one person – or one fraudulent vote – could have made the difference in the outcome of 43 local elections.

“When a single vote can have such a big impact in so many places, you can understand why we focus so heavily on accuracy of the voter rolls and the integrity of the elections process, and why we encourage every voter to take their right and responsibility to vote seriously.”

KRGV reports from South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley: “The Hidalgo County District Attorney’s Office will launch an investigation into allegations of voter fraud in recent elections.  Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation recently arrested three Hidalgo County women accused of paying for votes in the 2012 General Election. Federal officials said the women affected the outcome of some elections.”

In addition to politiqueras’ mail ballot fraud, DA Rene Guerra says he anticipates criminal investigations into vote-buying and illegal assistance at the polls, where in past elections people have assisted as many as 700 voters – enough to change the outcome of the elections.

“Guerra said the Texas Legislature will have to act to put an end to the politiquera problem.” 

Republican State Representative Cindy Burkett aimed to do just that in 2013 with HB 148, a bill to curb mail ballot harvesting that passed despite strident opposition from Democrats including the head of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, who sought to smear Burkett as racially motivated because “the majority of people who live in South Texas are Hispanic.”

South Texas Hispanic DA Guerra says he won’t let politics get in the way of pursuing fraudulent voting activity that is “destroying the fabric of a good democratic process.”  So far, legislative Democrats – especially those with a vested interest in lawsuits against safe voting reforms – haven’t appeared willing to follow Guerra’s example.

This doesn’t mean that True the Vote and their progressive counterparts/rivals won’t lock horns again in the future in Ohio and elsewhere – but if everyone concerned is honest (and nonpartisan) about what can be done to clean up and expand our voter rolls, it may get harder and harder to use the content of the discussion (as opposed to the rhetoric) to identify who’s making what proposals to improve voter registration.”