From the Styx by Peggy Tibbetts

Today I found this story buried on Page 13 in The Paper. Couldn’t find it on their website so I went to the Rocky Mountain News for the story.

Check this out:

Sec. of state’s campaign advisers also represent e-voting firm
By Myung Oak Kim and Lynn Bartels

The political consulting company running Secretary of State Mike Coffman’s congressional campaign also was working for a voting machine manufacturer when Coffman gave that company’s devices his seal of approval on Monday.

Premier Election Solutions, formerly Diebold, was the only one of four voting machine companies to have all of its equipment conditionally approved for use in 2008 elections.

Premier hired Phase Line Strategies, a Highlands Ranch consulting firm, in September to lobby on its behalf, records show.

Phase Line also is running Coffman’s campaign to take over U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo’s 6th Congressional District seat. Coffman said he hired Phase Line in November but has been talking to them since the summer.

“This is an outrageous conflict of interest,” said Paul Hultin, the lawyer who filed the lawsuit that resulted in Coffman’s certification process.

Hultin said Premier’s machines are known to be flawed and there was no credible basis for Coffman to certify them. “This explains what was going on,” he said.

Coffman and a Phase Line official both deny that Premier got any special consideration in the lengthy review of Colorado’s electronic voting systems.

“There was absolutely no outside influences that affected any of my decisions on the vendors,” Coffman said Wednesday night.

Chris Riggall, spokesman for Premier, said the company found out Wednesday night about Phase Line’s connection to Coffman.

“That was certainly news to us and of great concern to us . . . and effective tonight that relationship is terminated,” he said.

“Oh my God!” said Claudia Kuhns, executive director of the Voter Integrity Project, an advocacy group that pushes for accurate and verifiable elections. “I thought (the certification process) was politically capricious before but now I really do.

“When you have a situation where there’s the appearance of impropriety, it really causes one to be completely distrustful of the entire process” …

We can’t trust that our vote will be counted. We can’t trust the results of the certification process – or should I call it the DE-certification process.

You know what else is interesting about this story? Go back to Colorado’s 2006 Democratic landslide. Secretary of State Mike Coffman and Attorney General John Suther were the only 2 Republicans elected to state cabinet offices – by slim margins. The Secretary of State and Attorney General are the guys who control elections. 

This whole thing has a great big stink to it. Looks like the fix was in long before now.

Wow.

If you live in Colorado, I sure hope you are writing and calling and bitching. I sure am.

All I want for Christmas is my vote back!

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