GOP says 5,000 non-citizens voting in Colorado a ‘wake-up call’ for states

Republicans on the House Administration Committee want to
shore up voter registration rules in the wake of a Colorado study that found as
many as 5,000 non-citizens in the state took part in last year’s election.

Rep. Gregg Harper (R-Miss.), the panel’s chairman, called
the study “a disturbing wake-up call” that should cause every state to review
its safeguards to prevent illegal voting.

“We simply cannot have an electoral system that allows
thousands of non-citizens to violate the law and vote in our elections. We must
do more to protect the integrity of our electoral processes,” Harper added.

{mosads}Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler, a Republican,
told the panel that his department’s study identified nearly 12,000 people who
were not citizens but were still registered to vote in Colorado.

Of those non-citizen registered voters, nearly 5,000 took
part in the 2010 general election in which Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet
narrowly defeated Republican Ken Buck.

Colorado conducted the study by comparing the state’s voter
registration database with driver’s license records.

“We know we have a problem here. We don’t know the size of
it,” Gessler said in testimony to Administration’s Elections subcommittee.

He told Harper that Colorado would look to create a
registration system that would allow his department to ask that some people
provide proof of their citizenship in writing.

If individuals did not respond to the request, their
registration as voters would be suspended.

Rep. Charles Gonzalez (D-Texas) raised doubts about the
reporting, noting that the study itself said it was based on inconclusive data
and that it was “impossible to provide precise numbers” on how many people who
were registered to vote in the state were not citizens.

Gonzalez asked Gessler, a former prosecutor, if he would
have pursued a court case on such evidence.

Gessler responded that the goal of the study was to expose
voter registration issues and pursue administrative avenues to resolve them.

“We don’t have a screen for citizenship on the front end
when people register to vote,” he said.