Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Questions for Colorado Secretary of State Press Conference

Colorado Secretary of State Donetta Davidson has scheduled a press conference for October 13th. We think that the public deserves answers to the following questions:

A. It has been said by Mr. Kolwicz, Executive Director of CAMBER, that your office has created a massive opportunity for fraud, error and disenfranchisement. How do you respond to this charge?

  1. People have been registered without identification.
  2. What have you done to ensure that every registration accepted by an independent agent is delivered to the clerk? (For example, is every form serialized so that they can be tracked?)
  3. Records, needed by poll watchers to verify voter eligibility, are being withheld – such as did the voter supply ID?, where did the registration originate? (in clerk’s office, in driver’s license, by mail, by independent voter drive, etc.)
  4. Absentee ballots are being picked up by independent agents. What are you doing to ensure that every ballot picked up actually makes it into the ballot box?
  5. Since every ineligible vote cancels the vote of an eligible voter, what are you doing to protect eligible voters from being silently disenfranchised?
  6. Boulder County is using a non-secret ballot. How do you explain this clear violation of the Colorado Constitution? (Every ballot contains a unique, non-removable serial number, and every cast ballot is scanned into a ballot image file that could be looked at or stolen by insiders or hackers.)

B. What have you done to ensure that only U.S. citizens are registered to vote? How many non-citizens does your office estimate are registered to vote in Colorado? If you do not know, who is supposed to know this?

C. In addition to the voter registration problems, what other problems have been brought to your attention, and what are you doing about them?

  1. Boulder County threatened criminal charges against a legally appointed representative of a political party because he refused to falsify test data. The District Attorney found no basis for these charges.
  2. Why did you approve Boulder County’s falsification of the Primary election Canvass board results. The County created a document which did not represent the opinion of the Republican Party and you accepted it. Why?

E. You recently signed a multi-million dollar contract with Accenture to develop a statewide voter registration system. Are the registration system problems we are discussing here today solved by the new system, and how can people verify that these problems are resolved?


  1. Why was Accenture selected, considering that they are in multi-million dollar disputes with other governments for non-performance? Considering that they were associated with the ENRON scandal?
  2. Why was the contract developed and negotiated in secret?
  3. Why have responses to Open Records Requests for information about the contract been delayed?
  4. How much money will this system cost? Does Colorado own the results of the work? Will all of the data contained in the new voter registration system public, and will poll watchers and researchers be able to gain access to ALL of the data? Currently, Counties have refused these requests claiming that the data is proprietary information belonging to the Vendor.