There are so many terrible, voter-suppressing Secretaries of State at work this year, actively trying to undermine democracy in the U.S. on behalf of the Republican Party, it's been difficult to adequately cover them all. One who has largely managed to escape our wrath on these pages --- thanks to his horrible colleagues in places like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania keeping us so busy --- is Colorado's Sec. of State Scott Gessler.
Think Progress helps us to slightly make up for our failing today...
Instead, he is handing over the names to county clerks who may challenge them at the polls or when they receive absentee ballots. So far, one person has voluntarily come forward as a non-citizen in Larimer County. The county clerk explained:
It was a guy with a work visa. He didn’t even know he was registered to vote. Somehow we think it was a clerical mistake at the Department of Motor Vehicles when he got his driver’s license.
These remaining 141 people comprise .004 percent of Colorado voters.
Of course, we don't know how many, if any, of those 141 people, out of Colorado's 3.5 million registered voters [PDF] are actually non-citizens, but it's good to know that Gessler is spending time and state resources looking out for them by risking the removal of thousands of voters from the rolls to protect against the long-shot possibility that 141 of them may (but likely won't) cast illegal votes.
The story in CO is very similar to the one earlier this year in FL, where Gov. Rick Scott and Sec. of State Ken Detzner attempted an identical and similarly failed plan to remove so-called "non-citizen voters" from the rolls.
Meanwhile, Republicans in the state of Texas are also unhappy, because the Rule of Law keeps keeping them from disenfranchising voters through discriminatory Congressional redistricting maps and discriminatory polling place Photo ID restriction laws.
So maybe the old "dead voters on the rolls" gambit will work to keep some of those pesky voters from being able to cast their legal votes this year in Texas! Ya know, the same gambit that failed so spectacularly in South Carolina earlier this year when hundreds of supposedly "dead voters" had the temerity to, ya know, be alive.
Still, thousands upon thousands of registered voters die each and every year, in almost all 50 states, and very very few of them have the courtesy to call the County Clerk afterwards to inform them that they have died and should be removed from the voting rolls. But, no worries! Texas Republicans are on the case in the Lone Star State!...