I-Team reporter on voter registration fraud

DENVER - Authorities are calling for criminal charges and change following a 9News I-Team investigation showing widespread voter registration fraud in Colorado.

In fact, officials say the people in the I-Team report should go to jail. Denver District Attorney Bill Ritter told 9News Tuesday afternoon his office is investigating some 200 questionable voter registration applications. "People are trying to corrupt the election process. People should be prosecuted," Ritter said.

Our I-Team investigation found some voter registration workers signed-up people dozens of times for money. And some of those who registered aren't even allowed to vote. Workers forged signatures, made up addresses or changed legitimate voter information, many times without voters ever knowing it.

Kym Cason told 9News she registered herself 25 times and her friends 40 times. Cason claims she was trying to help her boyfriend earn money. He worked for a group called ACORN that paid workers by the hour but had a 5 application per hour quota. Cason told 9News, "everybody needs an extra dollar here now and they need to make their quota for the day."

Jim Fleshman, the regional supervisor for ACORN, told 9News tonight that the organization would fire any worker who did not deliver the required 5 applications per hour. ACORN claims to be a nonpartisan organization that works with low-income families.

9News also found a few bogus forms from the New Voters Project and the Colorado Progressive Coalition.

The group Fair Vote Colorado is encouraging people to go to its website and check their registration. Spokesperson Mark Eddy told 9News today, "This election, more than any other, has the possibility for confusion and mistakes to be made and we just want to be sure that people have an opportunity to correct those mistakes before the election." Fair Vote Colorado will have an Election Day "war room" set up. It will have lawyers standing by to talk to voters having difficulty voting at the polls. Their phone number is 888-839-4301 or you can go to www.fairvotecolorado.org.

You can also call your County Clerk to verify your information...but we've learned clerks will still be entering registrations up until Election Day.

Meanwhile, protect your own registration.

_____________________________

Subject: Will you be turned away on November 2nd?

This email is unfortunately not a hoax or urban legend.
Share it with any people whose votes you care about.
This is particularly important in "battleground" states.

1. Register in person

Unless you registered to vote in person at an official
location, you may not be registered, or you may have a
defective registration. You need to verify your voter
registration status in person with your local elections
office.

2. Verify it

There is some chance that even if you were properly
registered, and even voted in the primaries, someone
has since tampered with (filed a change on) your
registration, either to enable someone else to vote
as you, or just to deny your vote. Verify your
registration. Do this as late as possible (still
with time to fix it)

3. Look for abuse

If you gave personal information to a door-to-door,
telephone or web "get-out-the-vote" operation, there
may be fictional voters signed up as members of your
family or as unrelated people living at your address.
When you verify, ask who else is registered at your
address, or with your same name.

4. Vote as early as possible

If your locale allows it, you need to consider voting
absentee, and as early as possible, to forestall the
ability of someone else to impersonate you and steal
your vote.

In Kansas, you can register up to 15 days before the
election, but vote as early as 20 days before. So
register NOW, and then you can complete steps 2/3/4
on October 13.

Although the legacy media is not eager to report it, the
2004 election promises to include significant levels of
vote fraud. Ineligible voters, multiple voters, voter
impersonation (vote theft) and registration interference
have all been reported.

3rd-party registration drives cannot be trusted with
something as important as your vote.

Innocent error is possible with any group, but the more
radical organizations are actually invalidating or simply
not filing the registrations of voters not sympathetic
to their candidate. They are also creating additional
fictional registrations based on real addresses, names
and other personal info.

You need to take steps to ensure that your vote counts,
and that information about you is not being used to
enable fraudulent votes.

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