Colorado spends about $13 million a year to enforce a 2006 state law that requires local cops to report to federal immigration authorities arrestees who they suspect are undocumented immigrants, according to a report by the Colorado Fiscal Institute. Those reported to the feds spend an average of 22 days…
Pre-election news coverage about Secretary of State Scott Gessler often focused on his efforts to weed out non-citizen voters and prevent fraud through an initiative some activists called a wild goose chase. But at an event in Arapahoe County, where Gessler invited public feedback, most took the opposite stance: Election…
In September, Erica Guzman, twenty, and Stefanie Cardwell, 23, spent nights sleeping in their car. The two women, who have been dating for four years, say they had nowhere else to go. The search for shelter is especially difficult for Guzman, an undocumented Canadian immigrant. We spoke to the couple…
On Tuesday, Boulder county commissioners temporarily walked away from a fracking hearing due to a boisterous protest by attending activists. The next day, the officials issued a statement included here that decried the disruption using terms like “mob harassment.” But the director of a youth-oriented environmental organization who attended with…
Yesterday, the Boulder County Clerk’s office announced that its election results are finally certified. However, a spokesman for Secretary of State Scott Gessler says just the opposite — a final decision has not been made yet, although one could come soon. The conflicting statements have further irked those Boulder canvass…
We reported last week that the canvass board in Boulder County, responsible for certifying the results of the election, decided against it, arguing that there were serious flaws in the process. Hillary Hall, Boulder’s clerk and recorder, was not pleased. But when we asked Secretary of State Scott Gessler about…
Restrictions on campaign finance are ultimately violations of free speech rights and do little to foster fair elections. At least that’s the argument of Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler, who, in a speech yesterday, said he would like to see fewer limitations on campaign finance, arguing that reform efforts…
Election day may seem like a fading memory in Colorado. But the divisiveness of the race is alive in Boulder County, where members of the canvass board has refused to certify the results, arguing that there were many problems — including dozens of precincts where they say more votes were…
Colorado’s Secretary of State Scott Gessler maintains that voter fraud is a serious problem — and after launching initiatives to prevent illegal ballots from being cast, his office says that exactly 518 voters were removed from the rolls due to non-citizenship — more than expected. Some may have taken themselves…
In addition to facing criminal and ethics investigations into his alleged misuse of public dollars, Secretary of State Scott Gessler has spent months responding to criticisms that he has intimidated voters with his anti-fraud crusade. And just a week before the race, his staff got a hold of a document,…
There was a lot of talk this election season about access to voting — which is one reason Karen Suhaka, who runs a Denver-based online research company, decided to collect voter-driven data on the performance of polling sites across the country. Her website, MyFairElection.com, cataloged reviews from coast to coast,…
On Monday, we reported that after only two days on WhiteHouse.gov, a Colorado petition to secede from the United States already had more than 3,000 signatures — part of an odd post-election craze that now includes all fifty states. But Obama-haters aren’t the only ones speaking out. WhiteHouse.gov is now…
There’s been a lot of talk this election about how divided our country is — and that was very clear in Colorado, where a roughly even split had two camps bashing each other — sometimes on opposite sides of the street. Taking the divisiveness to a whole new level, voters…
Claudia Folska, the subject of our recent feature story “Fare Treatment,” won her race Tuesday for a seat on the Regional Transportation District board of directors, besting three opponents. Folska, who is blind and uses RTD to get around, will represent District E, which includes parts of Denver, Aurora, Greenwood…
Colorado voters — and even small children — were exposed to a seemingly absurd amount of political advertising this year in a battleground state that wound up not being a key to President Barack Obama’s victory. Perhaps that is why residents overwhelmingly passed the state’s other measure on the ballot,…
After generating months of headlines and backlash from voter rights’ groups, Secretary of State Gessler’s anti-fraud initiative resulted in 44 individuals being removed from the voter rolls in the state. But Gessler, in an election day interview, told us he wishes he could’ve done more and that it’s likely fraudulent…
Up until the final days of this year’s presidential race, pundits on both sides of the aisle agreed that Colorado remained a toss-up, and a key battleground for both candidates. In the end, however, the state, like virtually every close race in the country, ended up going to Obama, and…
It was after 10 p.m. that a woman wearing a blue dress and a donkey mask came up to us and put her snout, through which her eyes were visible, up against our face — so we were peering at each other through a tunnel of plastic hot with her…
Sell the house. Lay off employees. Shut down the business. Prepare for the children to move back home. These are some of the stories of gloom, doom and dread that Mitt Romney supporters at Denver’s official GOP watch party shared as news broke — rather suddenly, and before they even…
Mike Coffman has been declared the winner in the race for the 6th District, with Joe Miklosi, his Democratic rival (update), waiting until past 1 a.m. to concede; see his statement below. This loss demonstrates once again the power of the incumbency even in the case of what seemed to…
This afternoon, we stopped by the office of Secretary of State Scott Gessler to get a status report on the elections, and he tells us they are going well — and much better than some other swing states. He also dismissed news that he’s facing both criminal and ethics investigations…
Some Arapahoe County voters who wanted to cast their ballots today had to wait in a long line for several hours at one vote center — prompting some of Colorado’s top politicians to visit the site and assess the problem. At CentrePoint Plaza in Aurora, voters said they had to…
