An audit of the Colorado secretary of state’s office released today found no evidence that a state elections employee accessed voter data at work for sale through his side business.
That finding upholds an earlier investigation by Secretary of State Mike Coffman, who said the employee, Dan Kopelman, broke the rules by operating a partisan political business on the side but did not wrongfully access voter information as part of his state job.
“If the audit had found wrongdoing, then he would have been fired,” Coffman said.
Through his website, , Kopelman offered to sell targeted campaign data to Republican candidates.
When the allegations against Kopelman — a former president of the Denver Metro Young Republicans and former Coffman campaign worker — surfaced earlier this year, Coffman and a government watchdog group separately asked the state auditor to investigate as part of a broader look at the department’s voting programs.
Overall, the audit found problems in the oversight of voter-registration drives and maintaining the accuracy of the voter database. Other problems were noted in complying with the federal Help America Vote Act and in ensuring the security of the department’s computer network.
Chantell Taylor, the director of Colorado Ethics Watch and a critic of Coffman’s handling of the Kopelman allegations, said the audit shows “gross mismanagement” within the office. She said Coffman was aware of Kopelman’s partisan political business prior to the allegations, something Coffman denies.
“This is a very serious issue,” Taylor said today. “It is not to be taken lightly.”
Colorado Ethics Watch has asked Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey to investigate whether Kopelman broke state conflict of interest laws.
The audit determined that Kopelman did not access the state’s master voter-registration database during the first five months of this year, when he was employed in the department’s elections division. Kopelman has since been docked pay and has been reassigned within the secretary of state’s office.
Coffman said today that he has already undertaken steps to resolve the problems noted in the audit.
John Ingold: 303-954-1068 or jingold@denverpost.com
