State asks feds for help weeding out illegal voters

DENVER — Colorado’s Secretary of State is trying to make sure thousands of suspected illegal voters aren’t able to cast ballots this November.

Scott Gessler is asking the department of Homeland Security to help the state identify non-citizens who are registered to vote.

Gessler and Colorado Attorney General John Suthers sent letters to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano asking to use the fed’s database to verify the citizenship of about 5,000 Colorado voters.

The voters targeted provided non-citizenship documents such as green cards when they applied for a Colorado driver’s license.

“There’s definitely 5,000 people we’ve identified who, in the recent past, said they were non-citizens,” Gessler says. “The Department of Homeland Security is the only place that has a list of non-citizens.”   

Gessler is asking the DHS to respond to the request by July 20, so his office will have enough time to remove non-citizens from the voter registration lists before the election  on November 6.

“I think we have an obligation to take action,” Gessler says.

But Joanne Kron Schwartz, with the advocacy group, ProgressNow said the move is an attack on minorities, especially Hispanics, and it will discourage many eligible voters from showing up to the polls.

Schwartz told us, “The only real thing that will come of this is suppressing the vote and getting more people concerned about whether their vote will actually count.” Schwartz also questioned the secretary of state’s motives. “Gessler joked at an event that a good election is when Republicans win, that says a lot about his motives.”