COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—A Republican county official issued incorrect information about whether out-of-state college students can register to vote in Colorado, prompting sharp criticism from Democrats.
El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Robert Balink, the county’s top elections official, sent information to Colorado College in March saying students can’t register to vote in Colorado if their parents claim them as dependents in another state.
In fact, state law does allow out-of-state college students to vote in Colorado if they’ve lived in the state for at least 30 days before the election.
Balink issued a statement late Tuesday saying he had misinterpreted state law. He said his records show no person was denied a chance to register to vote based on the false information.
State Democratic Party officials jumped on the error Wednesday, saying it could discourage students from voting in an election when turnout among the young could be crucial.
“This is a blatant misstatement of the law,” said Democratic Party attorney Martha M. Tierney, adding that “chilling the votes of college students of any political persuasion is not appropriate.”
She congratulated Balink’s office for correcting the mistake but said, “I wish that they had done it much sooner than now.”
The incorrect information was in a newsletter Balink had sent to the Colorado College president’s office. It was unclear how far it went from there.
State Democratic Party Chairwoman Pat Waak and some students said a summary of the incorrect information was posted on the college Web site, but college spokeswoman Leslie Weddell said that did not happen.
Weddell said the college never distributed the March newsletter en masse to students.
The e-mail chain of the newsletter shows it was forwarded by the college president’s office to the student government president.
Waak said Democratic Party officials learned about the newsletter in the past few days from students.
Ben Slaughter, 21, a junior at the school, said he got the misinformation in an e-mail forwarded to him by a friend about a week ago.
“It didn’t make a ton of sense to me,” said Slaughter, a campus organizer for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
Slaughter said his confusion turned to anger when he realized the e-mail newsletter outlined restrictions on voter registration for students.
“I started to think that I may have broken the law by registering to vote here my freshman year,” said another student, Zachary Rowe, 21, a junior from Boston. “It was scary.”
State Sen. John Morse, D-Colorado Springs, said he was disappointed in Balink.
“Hopefully it was just a mistake and not anything more insidious than that,” Morse said.
Democrats also assailed Balink for what they said was a backlog of about 21,000 voter registration forms in the traditionally Republican County.
Liz Olson, an elections manager with the clerk’s office, said the backlog is actually about 3,000.
