{"id":37915,"date":"2022-10-10T15:50:22","date_gmt":"2022-10-10T21:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/30000-noncitizens-living-in-colorado-received-postcards-encouraging-them-to-register-to-vote\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T08:41:02","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:41:02","slug":"30000-noncitizens-living-in-colorado-received-postcards-encouraging-them-to-register-to-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/30000-noncitizens-living-in-colorado-received-postcards-encouraging-them-to-register-to-vote\/","title":{"rendered":"30,000 noncitizens living in Colorado received postcards encouraging them to register to vote"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Colorado
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold speaks during a committee meeting in Baton Rouge, La., on July 8. Colorado's Secretary of State\u2019s office says it mistakenly sent postcards to about 30,000 non-U. S. citizens encouraging them to register to vote. It blames the error on a database glitch and insists anyone who is not a citizen and tries to register will not be able to. (Matthew Hinton\/Associated Press file)<\/span>AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

DENVER \u2013 Colorado\u2019s Secretary of State Office says it mistakenly sent postcards to about 30,000 noncitizens encouraging them to register to vote, blaming the error on a database glitch related to the state\u2019s list of residents with driver\u2019s licenses.<\/p>\n

The office of Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold insisted none of the noncitizens will be allowed to register to vote if they try.<\/p>\n

The news comes at a time of widespread skepticism \u2013 often unfounded \u2013 of voting integrity after the 2020 presidential election and as Griswold, who has touted her role as a national advocate for secure elections, seeks reelection in the November midterms.<\/p>\n

Colorado\u2019s Republican Party chairwoman, Kristi Burton Brown, condemned Griswold for the error, saying in a Monday statement that \u201cJena Griswold continues to make easily avoidable errors just before ballots go out\u201d by mail on Oct. 17.<\/p>\n

Griswold faces Republican Pam Anderson, a former suburban Denver clerk and head of the state\u2019s county clerks association, who is a staunch advocate of Colorado\u2019s all-mail voting system.<\/p>\n

Griswold\u2019s office said in a statement that the postcards were mailed Sept. 27. The error happened after department employees compared a list of names of 102,000 people provided by the Electronic Registration Information Center, a bipartisan, multistate organization devoted to voter registration, to a database of Colorado residents issued driver\u2019s licenses.<\/p>\n

That Department of Revenue driver\u2019s license list includes residents issued special licenses for people who are not U.S. citizens. But it didn\u2019t include formatting information that normally would have allowed the Department of State to eliminate those names before the mailers went out, Griswold\u2019s office said Monday.<\/p>\n

The incident is under investigation, it said. Colorado Public Radio News<\/a> first reported the error.<\/p>\n

Colorado is among at least 18 states, along with the District of Columbia, that issue driver\u2019s licenses to non-U. S. citizens, according to the National Council on State Legislature<\/a>s. Colorado also automatically registers eligible voters when they obtain their driver\u2019s license from the Department of Motor Vehicles.<\/p>\n

Griswold\u2019s office said it was unaware that anyone who received the postcards in error had tried to register.<\/p>\n

It is sending notices to the approximately 30,000 people who aren\u2019t citizens but who mistakenly received the postcards. And it is applying several efforts to prevent or reject anyone not eligible to vote from registering, including comparing Social Security numbers required for each application, on a daily basis. County clerks also will refer suspect cases to local district attorneys for review.<\/p>\n

Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Voting Rights Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said the fact that the mistake was caught shows the system is working.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt should show, first of all, that mistakes can happen, but secondly that there are checks in place to make sure mistakes don\u2019t result in disaster,\u201d Morales-Doyle said. \u201cIt\u2019s not good this happened. It appears to be a case of human error and a database error and not some conspiracy, which I think some critics would seize on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morales-Doyle said there have been very few incidents of noncitizens attempting to register in the U.S. because the consequences are so severe \u2013 up to and including deportation.<\/p>\n

The Electronic Registration Information Center<\/a>, known as ERIC, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving U.S. voter rolls and encouraging registrations. About 33 states and the District of Colombia belong to the group. Under its contract with ERIC, Colorado sends a mailing to eligible residents encouraging them to register each election cycle.<\/p>\n

The Colorado postcards, in English and Spanish, specify that residents must be U.S. citizens and at least 18 years old to register. They tell recipients how to register but are not a registration form.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Secretary of State Office blames error on a database glitch related to driver’s license records<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37916,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,1621],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-37915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-voting"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37915"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83833,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37915\/revisions\/83833"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37915"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=37915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}