The State of Colorado has sent 30,000 voter registration notices to non-citizens in the state.
A spokesperson of the Colorado Secretary of State’s office confirmed that the mailers had been sent in error in a Friday statement obtained by Colorado Public Radio.
“The Department has become aware that approximately 30,000 EBU [Eligible But Unregistered] postcard mailers were incorrectly sent to ineligible Coloradans,” the unnamed representative said.
The ineligible residents possess non-citizen Colorado driver’s licenses.
“The office is undertaking an internal review of the incident and will take any corrective action that is warranted,” the representative continued.
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The notices urged their recipients to sign up to vote before the November midterms.
“Make sure your voice is heard this November,” the documents read, according to Colorado Public Radio. The notices included a link to www.GoVoteColorado.gov.
The move could lead some non-citizens to attempt to register to vote — either in willful defiance of the law or due to confusion over the state’s invitation to register.
However, state authorities insisted that non-citizens won’t be able to sign up, stating that Colorado’s voter registration website won’t accept such registrations, according to KUSA.
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The state even said that they intend to monitor voter registration rolls to make sure the non-citizens who got the mailers aren’t registered.
“The Department will also compare the list of approximately 30,000 individuals who incorrectly received the EBU mailer postcard to the statewide voter list on a daily basis to ensure none of those individuals register,” the secretary of state’s representative said, according to CPR.
“County clerks refer illegal registrations to their local district attorney for review.”
In a bid to remediate the wrongful mailers, the Secretary of State’s Office plans to send a follow-up mailer stating that only United States citizens are eligible to vote, according to CPR. Democrat Jena Griswold has served as secretary of state since 2019.
The Secretary of State’s Office told Colorado Public Radio that the agency compared the DMV data to lists of potential unregistered voters pulled by the Electronic Registration Information Center.
A formatting error caused the state’s failure to flag the non-citizen driver’s license holders as ineligible, according to CPR.
Louisiana revoked its state membership in ERIC, a non-profit with the stated purpose of strengthening voter rolls, earlier this year.
Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin cited what he saw as credible allegations of partisan bias and compromised funding sources of the organization.
