Colorado ‘Accidentally’ Sends Voter Registration Notices to 30,000 Noncitizens Encouraging Them to Register to Vote

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold has egg on her face after her office sent out postcards encouraging people to register to vote, and 30,000 of the mailers went to noncitizens.

Griswold has appeared on CBS News multiple times to reassure voters on Colorado’s “election integrity”. All the while she has also been denying any wide spread voter fraud taking place in the state.

While Griswold has blamed “right-wing” claims of voter fraud for misinformation, it seems her office has “accidently” added fuel to the fire.

The error is being blamed on a glitch with the state’s list of residents with driver’s licenses. Noncitizens who have been granted a license in the state of Colorado were included when they weren’t sorted from the list.

Griswold is seeking reelection this November. Colorado’s Republican Party Chairwoman, Kristi Burton Brown issued a statement on the news Monday, “Jena Griswold continues to make easily avoidable errors just before ballots go out,” by mail on October 17th.

Statement from Griswold’s office stated the postcards were mailed September 27th. After comparing a list of names of 102,000 people provided by the Electronic Registration Information Center to voter registration, to a database of Colorado residence issued driver’s licenses.

The list from the Department of Revenue included residents who were issued special licenses for non U.S. citizens. This would likely be due to the fact that the list didn’t include formatting to eliminate those people, and mailers were also sent to them according to Griswold’s office.

Currently the incident is under “investigation”.

Griswold’s office is currently unware if anyone who has received the mailer has tried to register to vote.

Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Voting Rights Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, came out in defense of Griswold. “It should show, first of all, that mistakes can happen, but secondly that there are checks in place to make sure mistakes don’t result in disaster,” Morales-Doyle said.

Griswold’s office handed Pam Anderson, the Republican for Secretary of State quite a gift right before the election.

Some may question why illegal immigrants have driver’s licenses.