In a blog post yesterday, I offered some fresh examples of how, when Scott Gessler is on right-wing radio, he often sounds just like the right-wing radio host, bashing Democrats.

That’s not good, if you’re the Secretary of State, because you’re supposed to be above the partisan fray, at least somewhat, so that people trust our election system.

In my example yesterday, from Gessler’s recent appearance on KOA’s Mike Rosen Show, Gessler said it’s “the left’s common tactic just to scream voter intimidation whenever anything comes up they don’t like.”

Gessler: “I mean if you look back, back in 2004, you know, the Kerry-Edwards presidential campaign actually published a Colorado election-day manual, and in that, they specifically said, if no signs of intimidation techniques have emerged yet, launch a preemptive strike. And they go through a whole list of things where the Democrats are supposed to launch a preemptive strike, accusing Republicans of intimidation, rounding up minority people. And that’s their word. It says, quote minority leadership denouncing tactics that discourage people from voting. So it’s really sort of a cynical way for the Democrats to try and rile up, and I should say the left as well, to rile up their base by making these accusations whether or not there are any facts to support it.”

I should have taken the time to see if Gessler had his facts right about the Kerry-Edwards campaign manual, but I’m grateful that Tom,  a commentator on ColoradoPols, looked it up for me.

Here’s an excerpt from it, as provided by the Democratic National Comittee, and it shows that, far from proving Gessler’s point that the left screams “voter intimidation whenever anything comes up they don’t like,” Democrats were simply preparing intelligently for possible voter intimidation:

II. HOW TO ORGANIZE TO PREVENT AND COMBAT VOTER INTIMIDATION The best way to combat minority voter intimidation tactics is to prevent them from occurring in the first place and prepare in advance to deal with them should they take place on election day.

1. If there are any signs of present or expected intimidation activity, in advance of election day, launch a press program that might include the following elements:

[The document continues with a list of suggestions, which you can read if you’re interested.]

On ColoradoPols, Tom offered this comment:

The manual in question was excerpted by Drudge in 2004. The DNC released a more complete excerpt indicating that the “pre-emptive strike” was to get information out to let potentially disenfranchised voters know what to look out for, especially in states with a history of voter intimidation and disenfranchisement.

It’s not surprising that Colorado had such a thing in the field since Donetta Davidson was letting fly with a stream of sketchy shit, including a big voter purge, inconsistent application of voting rules across counties and the wonky implementation of new voting machines. Even the Guardian newspaper covered our little doings. http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…

Actually, a pre-emptive strike to counter voter disenfranchisement sounds like something that would be useful this year in a number of states.

I couldn’t find a current copy of the DNC document, but here’s a 2004 wayback machine link http://web.archive.org/web/200…

Bottom line: it’s bad enough for a Secretary of State to throw out partisan salvos, as if he were Mike Rosen. But when his partisan attacks are also completely misleading or outright wrong, it’s even worse. And Rosen should let his listeners know about it.

As Secretary of State Scott Gessler’s term drags on, you’d think even the stomachs of conservatives like KOA’s Mike Rosen would turn when Gessler re-launches the partisan attacks he’s been on about since day one in office.

Maybe you wouldn’t expect Rosen to be sick of it, but everyone else, yes?

It’s almost laughable to suggest again that Gessler should take his office seriously and start sounding like our state’s top election official, instead of like a Republican attack dog, because no one expects Gessler to change his ways at this point.

But still, his partisan rhetoric is, to use an over-used word in political commentary, unacceptable, and even the likes of Rosen should call him on it.

For example, on Rosen’s show last week, Rosen read Gessler a Denver Post quote from Joanne Kron Schwartz, the Director of the progressive group ProgressNow, saying that Gessler’s attempt to find noncitizens on the voter rolls could intimidate some eligible voters, particularly Latinos, and result in their not voting.

A Secretary of State in his right mind, who wants people to have faith in elections, would answer Schwartz’s reasonable objection with a fact-based response, sticking to his lines about how the voting rolls must be scrutinized.

But Gessler’s immediate response sounds like something Rush Limbaugh might blast out.

“Unfortunately this is part of the left’s common tactic,” Gessler told Rosen, “just to scream voter intimidation whenever anything comes up they don’t like.”

Let me just say, I’m part of the left and I don’t scream voter intimidation “whenever anything comes up” that I don’t like. I never scream it at my 15-year-old son, for example, when he leaves a pig-pen-like trail of debris around the house.

Maybe Gessler means to say that the left is too concerned about voter intimidation.

But why would you expect a person with Gessler’s job title to stick to a measured response?

Gessler’s un-statesmanship continued, with Rosen’s approval:

Gessler: “I mean if you look back, back in 2004, you know, the Kerry-Edwards presidential campaign actually published a Colorado election-day manual, and in that, they specifically said, if no signs of intimidation techniques have emerged yet, launch a preemptive strike. And they go through a whole list of things where the Democrats are supposed to launch a preemptive strike, accusing Republicans of intimidation, rounding up minority people. And that’s their word. It says, quote minority leadership denouncing tactics that discourage people from voting. So it’s really sort of a cynical way for the Democrats to try and rile up, and I should say the left as well, to rile up their base by making these accusations whether or not there are any facts to support it.”

Even if you accept Gessler’s facts about the Kerry-Edwards campaign, and why should you, do you really want your secretary of state to dismiss a historically legitimate concern about voter intimidation by accusing Democrats of cynically riling up their base?

It’s this sort of brazen partisanship that, at the end of the day, is Gessler’s core downfall as Secretary of State, epitomized in Gessler’s quote to the Greeley Tribune about his job: “You’re here to do something, to further the conservative viewpoint.”

We can disagree with his loose-with-the-facts style, and priorities, but his sullying of the office is what kills me most—and should even kill a civic-minded guy like Rosen.

“You have to sort of wonder at the motivations,” Gessler said later in the interview, speculating about the evil leftists that seem to haunt him. “I think a lot of times, what they are trying to do is play the race card, play the disenfranchisement card, and use it as a political talking point to rile up their base.”

Thanks, Rush Gessler.

On his KOA radio show yesterday (June 11), Mike Rosen asked Secretary of State Scott Gessler about a paragraph toward the end of a  July 10 Denver Post article about Gessler’s efforts to get the Department of Homeland Security review lists of voters.

Rosen read the following sentence from The Denver Post:

“The state has also identified 430 people who contacted Gessler’s or their local county elections office, and asked to be removed from the voter registration list because they are not citizens.”

Then Rosen and Gessler had this exchange:

Gessler: “Well, let me tell you exactly what’s going on. There’s a little bit of a misquote there. We’ve got 430 people statewide over the last several years who either, when they filled out a voter-registration form said, I am not a citizen, and some of them, many of them, were erroneously registered to vote.”

Rosen: They checked the wrong box when they filled out the form?

Gessler: Well, there’s a question as to whether they checked the wrong box or the right box. I think a lot of people are being truthful. They are saying they are not a citizen but they think they have the right to vote, which they don’t. Or they actually wrote us, and there are a lot of people who wrote us. And I say ‘us,’ the state, one of the clerks and recorders or someone like that, and said, please remove me from the voting rolls. I am not a citizen… They were not on the voting rolls. We’ve taken those people off.

Gessler is saying there’s an incorrect statement in The Post, and it appears to come from Gessler spokesman Rich Coolidge, that 430 people contacted the state and asked to be removed from the voter rolls.

What’s the correct figure? He doesn’t appear to know, and that’s what media types need to keep in mind when Gessler makes any numerical utterance.

With a straight face, Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler told KOAA-TV, Channel 5, in CO Springs on Saturday:

Gessler: I think that [people allegedly receiving two ballots in the mail] really underscores the need to have measures, and these are things I’ve been pushing for a while, to make sure we’ve got accurate voter rolls. So this is a really disturbing, systemic issue that’s going on in Pueblo now and we need to get to the bottom of this very quickly.

“Systemic” issue?

Gessler told KOAA-TV that an undetermined number of people in Pueblo received two election ballots, after they changed their voter registration information.

In KOAA-TV’s story on Saturday, the evidence for this was…. Well, there was none. Only the claim of Gessler:

KOAA-TV: The Secretary of State told us the problem started at the Clerk and Recorder’s Office. People who changed their voter registration had a second profile made in the system, resulting in the extra ballot….

The Secretary of State says the biggest worry is people who do vote twice will dilute votes of those with one ballot, making for inaccurate election results.

So, if you believe Gessler, the election system is teetering toward free fall.

And unfortunately neither the Pueblo County Clerk, who allegedly caused the problem, nor any other source was interviewed to present a countervailing opinion (though, to its credit, KOAA-TV did interview the clerk for a subsequent story, in which he said about 200 ballots out of 59,000 “may be doubles”).

For the KOAA-TV’s Saturday piece, someone named Clarice Navarro appeared on the screen and said:

Navarro: It makes you question how valid each election is, and elections are very important to the state of Colorado and Pueblo in general. So it’s very concerning.

KOAA-TV failed to tell us that Navarro is a Republican State House candidate in the Pueblo area. And she’s a former staffer for Republican Rep. Scott Tipton.

Also unreported was the fact that Gessler and Pueblo’s Clerk and Recorder, Gilbert Ortiz, are in litigation over Gessler’s efforts to block the Ortiz’s decision to send mail ballots to voters who missed the last election.

The Ortiz-Gessler dispute might be part of the explanation for Gessler’s sky-is-falling response to what appears to be minor problem, involving ballots that may actually never be cast.

And, if they were submitted, the election system is designed to identify duplicate ballots and ensure that only one is counted, as Ortiz pointed out in KOAA-TV’s follow-up story.

Gessler’s response to Ortiz is very different from Gessler’s treatment of Teller County Clerk & Recorder J.J. Jamison’s acknowledged mistake last week of mailing 4,100 ballots that omitted a line for voters to sign their ballot. The signature on mail-in ballots is essential to protecting against voter fraud.

Here’s what Gessler told the Colorado Springs Gazette about Jamison’s mistake:

“We’ll be OK on this,” said Secretary of State Scott Gessler told the Gazette. “I know in about every election, somehow, some way, a mistake is made. People run elections and people make mistakes.”

KOAA-TV concluded its report in full breathlessness:

KOAA-TV: But how this error will impact the election…and voters’ confidence in our government, is yet to be seen.

With sloppy, hyperbolic reporting about a Secretary of State who fear mongers, maybe that’s true.

But if the facts about Colorado’s election system are reported, it’s more likely that voters will have a crisis of confidence in our Secretary of State, not our voting system.

Should I write another blog about Secretary of State Scott Gessler? Probably not, but then I say to myself, if my three readers don’t know the kind of stuff smart talk-radio hosts like KHOW’s Craig Silverman let Gessler get away with saying, without raising a peep of protest, then there’s no hope that lesser radio hosts will do the right thing and ask Gessler follow-up questions that would illuminate the innuendo and misinformation in his statements.

You still  might say, who cares? Gessler and the radio hosts are hopeless. Let the hot air go float out of the room undisturbed.

I’d be inclined to think the same way if I didn’t hear the things Colorado’s top-dog election official says. But once I hear Gessler, I can’t convince myself that doing nothing is the proper response.

It started on KHOW’s Caplis and Silverman on Monday when Craig Silverman, hosting alone with Dan Caplis away, asked Gessler, “You always hear rumors about voter fraud, election fraud.  What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened in Colorado that you’re aware of?”

Good question, right? It’s a polite way of asking, “Mr. Secretary of State, you’ve spread baseless claims of voter fraud, including right here on this radio show when you said there’s a ‘pretty high incidene of fraud’ here in Denver, but can you cite a specific example of fraud in Colorado, ever?”

“Well,” replied Gessler to Silverman’s question, not mine (his office won’t talk to me). “There’s, historically, you know, going back like forty, fifty years ago, there were very clear instances of just outright stealing elections. In fact, I think it was down in southern Colorado some of the mining camps, the company towns there that they had, the companies would control the polling places and steal elections. And those were overturned. In Colorado, the last prosecutions I’m aware of, we’ve had some people vote in two states. And then when ACORN was operating, there were several people who were prosecuted, and convicted I believe, of voter registration fraud here in Colorado, as well. So, we’ve seen it happen historically in the past, you know, several decades ago, and we’ve seen it happen very recently too.”

I wish Silverman had asked Gessler about the “some people” who were allegedly prosecuted for voting in two states. When? How many? Where? I did some research and cannot find a recent case like this.

I wish Silverman had pointed out that “voter registration fraud” is a completely different animal than voter fraud. Because no one actually voted. So his reference to ACORN, apparently referring to a 2005 case when employees were convicted of submitting false voter registration forms, is misleading.

And I wish Silverman had jumped all over Gessler’s conclusion that “we’ve seen [election fraud] happen very recently, too.” Very recently? Gessler didn’t provide any facts to support this.

Asked about his interview with Gessler, Silverman told me he was too pressed for time to deal with the complicated topic of voter fraud.

“I did not have time to flesh that out,” he told me, adding the topic would  lead to a “ten-minute rabbit hole.” “A follow up would have led to an insider-baseball discussion about those cases.”

I don’t think asking for basic details about the cases, where and when they occurred, is insider baseball. Neither is a discussion about the distinction between “election fraud” and “voter registration fraud.”

“If you get into the minutia of legal cases it’s is a turn off [for listeners.],” said Silverman. “While I care about the issue, it’s not one of my areas of expertise.”

“I will say this,” Silverman said. “Gessler is good for talk radio. He’s in the eye of the storm.”

So here’s question that might lead Silverman, me, and Gessler out of the rabbit hole and into the sunlight.

(Sorry in advance if it sounds too lofty.)

Gessler may be good for talk radio, and for bloggers for that matter, but what about our basic trust in government, which rests to some degree on faith in elections? How seriously should we take it, or should we ignore it, when our Secretary of State is running around on the radio and elsewhere making accusations of very recent election fraud (we’re talking outright fraud, even by noncitizens), that are unproven or have been categorically disproven?

I have to say, it must be tough to interview Scott Gessler.

He says so many half-baked, half-proven, innuendo-laden things that, as an interviewer, you’d have to constantly be interjecting with: Where do your numbers come from? Do you have proof? On what documents do you base these claims? Do you think your behavior befits your office?

Just yesterday I bashed Mike Rosen for failing to interrogate Gessler when he said Democrats like to “rile” up Hispanics to get their votes.

But I have to give Rosen a bit of a break here. I took a second look at the Gessler interview and found yet more outrageous claims that I had missed previously, demonstrating that even with the luxury of sitting at a computer and being able to re-wind a podcast, it’s easy to miss stuff Gessler says that should be challenged.

My first time through the Rosen interview I managed to miss Gessler’s statement that he thinks, categorically, that Democrats are trying to “game the system” by backing a bill in the state legislature allowing clerks can to send ballots to registered voters who did not vote in the previous election.

Gessler said: “So, it seems to me that they were really invested in making this change, trying to game the system. And it was maybe more than just a policy dispute for them.”

In retrospect, Rosen should have asked Gessler for evidence that Democrats are essentially against fair elections, trying to rig the system in their favor. This is a serious allegation, even coming from Gessler.

As it was, the only proof Gessler offered in his interview was that Democratic State Chair Rick Palacio was, Gessler said, “uncorked” and “red-faced.”

Gessler: You know what I found really interesting?  When we were sort of in this battle at the legislature, I mean, I viewed it very much as a policy disagreement.  And, you know, you can have different views on the policy.  I think that the position they were trying to advocate was completely wrong.  But when you look at how uncorked [Palacio} became, and was just all sort of red faced and angry, it makes me wonder if there was something in there that the Democrats were using to try and game the system.  And remember, this is the same framework that we’ve had for seventeen years, now, in Colorado. And then to sort of trot out these stale claims of disenfranchisement, as if there are thousands of people in Colorado now being disenfranchised, which is simply not the case. So, it seems to me that they were really invested in making this change, trying to game the system. And it was maybe more than just a policy dispute for them.

So here’s my advice for anyone whom Gessler grants interviews to. Schedule two interview sessions, no just one. Tell the Secretary of State that your second interview slot will be for the follow-up questions that inevitably slip by in the rush of unsubstantiated allegations and outright misinformation that comes out of him.

Mike Rosen likes to present himself as a stern parental figure on the radio, sounding rational even when he isn’t.

He builds this persona by pouncing on guests when their logic doesn’t add up. If you’ve heard Rosen, you know he can be effective (and mean) at this, often demolishing innocent callers who really don’t deserve the punishment.

So you wonder why Rosen can’t bring himself to demanding rational responses from a formerly high-paid lawyer, who’s used to verbal assaults like Rosen’s.

I’m thinking of Secretary of State Scott Gessler, who was on Rosen’s KOA show April 2.

Rosen and Gessler discussed a number of issues, but the one that caught my attention focused on the ASSET legislation under consideration in the state legislature. It would give qualifying undocumented high-school graduates a special in-state tuition rate at Colorado universities that elect to participate.

With his usual air of rational certainty, Rosen told Gessler that the ASSET bill is “transparently part of a strategy to court Latino voters.”

“Yeah,” Gessler responded. “I think one of the challenges the Democrats have is Latino voters, in my experience and sense is that, I mean, they’re fundamentally conservative folks. I mean, they’re oftentimes very socially conservative. They’re people who put their heads down and work hard and aren’t looking for government handouts. And the Democrats’ stock and trade is government handouts. So they sort of have to rile ’em up as a way to try and get their votes.”

Rile ’em up? As if the Hispanics are like children who should be winding down before bedtime?

Yes, Hispanics are upset, and rightly so.

As Gessler should know, with all his knowledge of Latino voters, it’s the GOP that’s doing the riling. There’d be no issue here if Republicans took the advice of conservative Denver Post columnist Vincent Carroll and supported the ASSET bill.

But did Rosen even gently question Gessler’s condescending and irrational comments, like he might have if a first-time caller was on the line? No.

So I called Ricardo Martinez, Co-Director 0f Padres y Jovenes Unidos, for his perspective on Gessler’s comments.

“ASSET has passed in thirteen other states,” Martinez told me. “Among them are Texas, Utah, Kansas, and Oklahoma, which are all Republican-controlled. They saw it as an economic benefit. They didn’t let ideology stand in the way of common sense.”

So, I guess Gessler would say that it’s the GOP in Texas that’s riling up Hispanic voters?

Martinez also pointed out that the ASSET bill doesn’t provide any free benefits, so Gessler’s statement about handouts is irrelevant.

“They would be paying the standard tuition,” he said, adding that no tax dollars would support the tuition of undocumented students. “This is not a hand out.”

Rosen and Gessler also discussed the Colorado Democratic Chair Rick Palacio’s suggestion that Gessler resign or be removed from office.

Rosen read Gessler a portion of an article from a March 30 Denver Post by Sara Burnett, quoting University of Colorado Professor Ken Bickers’ view that Democrats are calling on Gessler to step down to appeal to Latino voters who are critical to the re-election of President Obama.

Rosen read from The Post:

Bickers speculated Democrats may have an ulterior motive [in calling on Gessler to resign or removed from office]: creating “a storyline” to appeal to a particular group of voters. Most likely that’s Latinos, who are among those voters Democrats say will be disproportionately affected by Gessler’s efforts, and a voting bloc that will be key to President Barack Obama winning re-election this fall.

“To me it’s a sign that they think they have a weakness in the presidential election,” Bickers said.

Gessler responded:

Well, it’s good that we’ve got some good professors at the University of Colorado because every now and then they nail it. And I think that’s absolutely correct as to what’s going on.

So, not only are Democrats are riling up Hispanics, but they’re creating a story line, with Gessler as a main character, in a cynical ploy to get votes?

I wish Rosen had asked Gessler if he thinks undocumented high-school graduates, who can’t go to college because Republicans like Gessler are blocking them, see the ASSET bill that way, as an empty story line or a useless riler upper.

Or do they see it as real? As a chance to work hard and get ahead?

If Rosen had asked questions like those, maybe more Hispanics and others who believe in all-American opportunity would get riled up.

But that wouldn’t be good for Rosen or Gessler, would it?

Secretary of State Scott Gessler recently made an appearance Colorado’s flagship Tea-Party radio show, KLZ’s Grassroots Radio Colorado.

I was jealous because Gessler’s office won’t talk to me, and it’s possible that even my audience of three people is bigger than KLZ’s.

But it made me feel a little bit better when I found out that Gessler’s also boycotting the Colorado Independent and AM760’s David Sirota show, as I’ll explain below.

Still, it raises the question of whether it matters all that much that a conservative elected official, not just Gessler but any of them, boycotts progressive media outlets. Or whether a progressive office holder should feel obligated to talk to conservative media types.

If I were Gessler, I’d look at the actual work of the journalist or media person who’s requesting the interview. If their work shows them to be unfair, inaccurate, and generally unconcerned about civil discourse, then an elected official can justify not talking to them.

For my part, I can’t help but be nicer to people if they let me interview them. I normally try to be fair, but I’m even more careful if I actually talk to someone. I like to think most writers are this way.

I asked progressive columnist and talk-show host David Sirota for his thoughts on this broad topic. According to John Turk, producer of the David Sirota Show on AM 760, Gessler spokesman Rich Coolidge told him last week, just after Gessler appeared on Grassroots Radio Colorado, that Gessler had “no interest” in coming on Sirota’s show to talk about possible voter fraud.

Sirota emailed me:

My view is that the best elected officials are those who make themselves available to the widest possible audience of their constituents. In Colorado, though, that’s the exception (Ed Perlmutter is one for instance), not the norm. Here, most politicians see themselves – and carry themselves – as if they are part of an elite country club. They typically only make themselves available to their friends in the media who they know won’t ask them a single substantive or hard-hitting question – those who will simply propagandize for their agenda and kiss their ass in a very public way. I’m not surprised by that. I’m a journalist, and genuine journalism is a threat to those in power who are either ashamed of their behavior or who shouldn’t have to answer to anyone. Most of the politicians in the state know that regardless of party, I don’t pull punches and will ask them tough questions, and so many of them avoid my show. I see that as a badge of honor.

The Colorado Independent’s John Tomasic has also gotten the cold shoulder from Gessler. Tomasic offered these thoughts in an email:

The question of officeholder responsiveness matters mostly in its relationship to accountability.

It seems obvious that when people elected to office are willing to go on public record regularly on topics big and small and to field unscripted questions, it’s always a good sign for the city or state or country they’re serving. As any fair-minded person in a position of authority knows, explaining your actions means making the case for them. If you can do that well, you gain legitimacy for those actions and support for them and cooperation to bring off your grand plans.

The energy it takes to explain yourself, even in fraught political or business environments, is worth it

Our secretary of state is a longtime controversial figure. It’s my opinion that he revels in it. He’s a courtroom attorney. I like that about him, the fact that he’s a fighter, if for no other reason than he’s fun to write about. Unfortunately, in office, it seems clear he is increasingly adopting what has become a familiar approach to the media on the right, which is to malign the media and retreat into a silo of friendly outlets while delivering an occasional stock quote to the paper of record. That just seems like a short-haul strategy to me.

Gessler is not a  representative from some very conservative district.

He is a state officeholder. The topics he deals with every day as secretary of state are enormously important for all the citizens of Colorado. He oversees voting, campaign finance rules– really basic stuff that is of equal interest to citizens all across the political spectrum. For that reason alone, he is a person of interest for everyone reporting about politics in this state: newspaper people, broadcast people, bloggers, etc, and he has a crack staff of communication experts at his disposal. Use them, I say! Let’s hear more every day from spokespeople Rich and Andrew at the secretary of state’s office. Turn those guys loose! “Free Rich!” “Free Andrew!”

Granted, the media is a player in the political process and dealing with the media as an elected official can certainly be like navigating a mine field. It’s only my opinion but, as someone who has watched this politics-media tug of war with keen interest for years and who has watched big political stories unfold from the inside, as an editor and reporter, I can say that the subjects of those stories would have nearly always fared better by talking to the reporters writing the stories.

I’m reporting on the war over voting laws that has taken the nation by storm in the past two years. Gessler has put himself on the frontlines of that war, proposing major changes to our state election rules. So I’ll keep asking questions. Maybe some day soon, I’ll get a response.

Meantime, I’m developing a cordial and, I must say, fruitful relationship with the secretary’s office conducted via the Colorado Open Records Act. It could be worse.

I’m ready to join the “Free Rich” campaign, and I’m thinking about offering myself up for the dunk tank at the first “Free Rich” fundraiser.

But as Tomasic illustrates, part of the trick of journalism is to find ways to get information when you can’t get it mouth-to-mouth. Who else knows? What documents are available? Getting blacklisted for interviews, even in an apparently partisan manner from the Secretary of State, is how it  goes.

And obviously both parties do this. Gov. John Hickenlooper won’t go on KHOW’s Caplis and Silverman show, the hosts allege on air. Though he’s on KOA’s Mike Rosen’s Show monthly.

Rep. Scott Tipton isn’t talking to the tea-party-leaning radio program, the Cari and Rob Show. But Tipton’s Democratic challenger Sal Pace will go on the show.

KHOW’s Peter Boyles likes to say no elected official will go on his show anymore, though I heard Rep. Chris Holbert and Sen. Ted Harvey on Boyles’ show Feb. 15 to discuss their gun bills.

Mitt Romney skipped over all the major Denver media last month, eliciting an admirable Howard-Beale-like outcry from Fox 31 political reporter Eli Stokols.

It’s always been this way, you’d say. But the changes in the media make the situation worse for real people (who stopped reading this blog post before the first paragraph, even though I put “rabid” in the title to lure them in).

With the major media in decline, and more small outlets lining up along ideological lines, many people are less likely to hear from elected officials they disagree with.

Progressives, for example, who consume news from progressive news outlets, won’t be hearing from Scott Gessler directly any time soon, it appears.

That’s not good, and you have to think it will get worse, because, politically, Gessler can write off the left, talk to his conservative base, and try to reach moderates through other means, which may or may not include The Denver Post in the long run.

Under this scenario, how does the partisan divide do anything but get wider?

To be fair, and this is my attempt at ending on a hopeful note, I should tell you that even after Gessler’s office rejected my own interview requests, Gessler was willing to speak with me when I approached him after a speech  he gave at Colorado Christian University. I told him I was a liberal blogger, and he still spoke with me.

In the semi-public setting, maybe he felt a responsibility, as an elected official, not to turn away from me?

But,  like Westword, I didn’t ask him the right follow-up question. Who knows if I’ll get another chance?

Westword’s Kylie Horner askedAndrew Cole, Secretary of State Scott Gessler’s Communications Advisor, about Gessler’s repeated references to unproven instances of election fraud in Colorado.

I’m sending over a big high-five to Westword for asking the question, which major media are ignoring, but Cole slipped out of it, as you see below, leaving the door open for Westword or some other enterprising media entity to follow up.  Gessler’s office won’t answer my questions on this matter.

Here’s what Cole told Westword:

“We don’t have proof of a lot of fraud,” Cole says. “Critics on the left say he’s talking about massive fraud. When we point to incidences of fraud, they say that’s too limited. He’s never talked about massive fraud; he’s only talked about instances in the fraud which we know are there.”

The Secretary of State’s office pointed to a 2010 election case in which six voters were found to have voted twice — once in Colorado and once Kansas. “We think that those sorts of instances of fraud point to vulnerabilities in the system,” Cole says.

I wish I could send you one of  Jon Stewart’s dumbfounded faces through this blog.

I mean, where’s the fraud?

The six people accused of voting twice have yet to be convicted. All we have here is possible fraud. Not actual factual fraud, yet.

Also, Gessler said on the radio Monday that “some” noncitizens voted. This of course raises the shadowy specter of Colorado elections being influenced by foreigners. Are the people who allegedly voted twice noncitizens?

So someone should ask Cole, or preferably Gessler himself, where’s the actual fraud he’s been talking about?

Before he entered office, and discovered the salary to be too low, Gessler was a high-paid lawyer who knows better than to play fast and loose with the f word.

Every time Secretary of State Scott Gessler alleges outright voter fraud in Colorado, I think to myself, this has to be the last time he says this, unless he produces evidence to back it up.

And then he says it again, like he did on KLZ’s Grassroots Radio Colorado Monday:

We’re continuing to do the analysis on the issue of noncitizens not voting here, or I’m sorry, noncitizens being on the voting rolls here in Colorado, and some of them voting. We did a study last year, and we’re going to do some more analysis and come up with more evidence to show people that there, in fact, are problems here in Colorado with that and, again, hopefully we can get folks, particularly Senate Democrats… [BigMedia emphasis]

Just because Gessler has alleged actual, real, not-theoretical, election fraud before, without showing proof of it, doesn’t mean it’s any less serious an accusation when he says it again.

Sorry to repeat the obvious, but this is from the mouth of Colorado’s Secretary of State!! And sorry to use two exclamation marks.

It’s our voting system, and he’s in charge of it. And we like to think of ourselves as tough when it comes to corruption, especially in the all-American area of voting.

Yet Gessler’s repeated accusations of election fraud (I now count three times he’s said it) have flown largely under the major media’s radar, not mentioned once, for example, in The Denver Post news pages, though columnist Fred Brown brought up the topic.

Again, I’m not talking about Gessler’s many warnings and innuendos about fraud. I’m talking actual fraud here.

If journalists won’t publicly hold Gessler accountable for his comments on this topic, which is so central to why journalism is supposed to exist then, I’m sorry, they should find new jobs.

I’m not saying reporters have given Gessler a free pass. They haven’t, and he doesn’t think so either. On the radio Monday, Gessler said:

The mainstream media beats me up all the time. They don’t like what I’m doing.

I don’t see reporters not liking Gessler as such. They’re mostly just reporting what he’s doing, but on the fraud issue, the election-fraud-is-happening-now-in-Colorado-now angle to this story, there’s been too much silence, except from Gessler.