Centennial State News

Of the 30,000 noncitizens in Colorado receiving postcards informing them how to register to vote, some were “living in the country without authorization,” according to an NPR report.

The Colorado Secretary of State’s office said it sent the postcards to noncitizens in error – noncitizens don’t have the right vote in Colorado – and that it was looking into what caused the mistake.

The office did not return a request from the Centennial State News asking how those living in the country illegally, not here on a student visa, green card or via other legal means, were part of the group that received the postcards.

National election integrity advocate Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, theorized that since Colorado gives drivers licenses to those here illegally, the secretary of state would have those addresses through the state’s Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV).

“It looks like they ran a list of potentially eligible but unregistered voters provided by ERIC [Electronic Registration Information Center] against their DMV data but hadn’t properly segregated the noncitizens in the DMV files,” Snead told the Centennial State News.

DMV did not return a request for comment.

ERIC has run afoul of voter integrity groups before.

In September, the public interest law firm, the Thomas More Society (TMS) filed a lawsuit on behalf of a group of voters against the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) over its contracting with ERIC for maintenance of its voter lists, WisVote.

“Under the Help America Vote Act,” TMS attorney Erick Kaardal said in a statement, “the United States Congress deemed that maintaining the statewide voter registration system database is seen as such a core governmental purpose that it cannot be delegated to any other organization, including the Electronic Registration Information Center, Inc., for which – according to its website – Wisconsin would have paid a one-time joining fee of $25,000, and an annual member fee of somewhere between $16,000 and $74,000.”

Kaardal added that “the delegation of this government function to an outside entity has enabled the potential rigging of Wisconsin’s federal elections towards particular federal candidates.”

Earlier this year, the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a public interest law firm specializing in election law, filed a lawsuit in federal court against Secretary of State Jena Griswold accusing her of violating the National Voter Registration Act for not allowing public inspection of her office’s voter list maintenance efforts.

In a statement, PILF said Colorado is required to send the postcards to those who are eligible to vote but not registered; the requirement is part of its membership duties in ERIC.

But PILF President J. Christian Adams said that requirement doesn’t include noncitizens since they don’t have the right to vote.

“We have asked Colorado to document instances where the checks they presumably have in place to prevent aliens from registering actually worked,” Adams said. “If we don’t receive the documents we requested, we will exercise rights under federal law.” 

Spokeswoman for PILF Lauren Bowman told the Centennial State News that they are awaiting a ruling on the secretary of state’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.