The Colorado attorney general’s office has found insufficient evidence to charge El Paso County Com mis sioner Douglas Bruce with a crime stemming from his conduct during a May 2 Falcon Fire Protection District election.
Investigators found “there is not sufficient evidence that he was doing any electioneering while he was within (the 100-foot) barrier” where campaigning is prohibited, Jeanne Smith, deputy attorney general, wrote in a letter dated Friday to Alex Donnell, a fire district board member who filed a complaint against Bruce.
Bruce said that the letter “completely exonerates” him and that the allegations against him were “false and malicious.”
Donnell said he was surprised by Smith’s findings.
“We felt there was enough evidence to show that state statute under the election- law statute had been violated; otherwise we never would have moved forward with this,” he said.
In the letter to Donnell, Smith wrote that investigators found evidence that Bruce was within 6 feet of the ballot box or other voting equipment, which is prohibited by law, the letter from Smith said.
“There is an allegation that when confronted and asked to leave, Mr. Bruce responded that he could stay because he is a county commissioner and wanted to verify proper conduct of the election. The statute is clear that no person other than election officials and those in the process of voting are allowed to be in that proximity to equipment,” Smith wrote.
Smith said investigators found that Bruce stayed only a short time after he was asked to leave.
“I was vindicated, just as I said I would be,” Bruce said Wednesday. “I did nothing wrong at any time. The man hallucinated the whole thing.
“The things that he said that he personally witnessed never happened. I was not escorted out of any polling place. I went in just to look at the layout in the first place because it was a secret polling place that had not been published in the TABOR notice,” Bruce said.
Staff writer Erin Emery can be reached at 719-522-1360 or eemery@denverpost.com.
