When a public figure attacks journalism, reporters should see it as an opportunity to help people understand what reporters do and why they should continue to exist.

I mean, if journalists don’t defend themselves, who will? Academics? Maybe, but who cares?

And if only the marginalized and irrelevant characters are defending journalism, you have to think the profession will sink even faster than it is now.

In July, for example, Rep. Cory Gardner said on Grassroots Radio Colorado that “the media” is biased against people like him who believe in smaller government, but as far as I know, no journalist has reported why Gardner believes this, much less responded to it.

Last week, Secretary of State Scott Gessler said “a lot of the mainstream media” are “fine” with Republicans as long as they “don’t make waves.” But if Republicans, presumably like Gessler himself,  “challenge the status quo,” then then the media get upset.

Here’s a chance for journalists to explain 1) whether they’ve been “upset” at Gessler, and 2) why their coverage of him has been in the public interest.

But no such stories have been written, even though Gessler’s attack on the media appeared in The Denver Post’s Spot blog.

Then over the weekend, The Post served up a story about Gerry Whitman lashing out at the media during a farewell news conference, saying the news media’s portrayal of his department was “just ridiculous” and stories about excessive force have been overblown.

Another opportunity for journalists to stand up for themselves! But I noticed little or no such self defense in the article.

So I emailed Post reporter Kirk Mitchell, who wrote the Whitman article, and told him that when a public official attacks the media, I think reporters should treat the accusation as they would in any other news story, and present readers with a response from the entity that’s attacked.

Why didn’t he offer a quotation from a Post editor or another journalist about whether the media’s police coverage was fair.

He wrote back, “The story did mention that there were 10 police firings since March.”

True, that’s indeed a response, but let’s face it. It’s weak (and it was left out of the online edition). Here’s the graf Mitchell refers to:

[Whitman’s] comments came during a year in which 10 of his officers have been fired since March, six after lying about excessive-force complaints.

The Post could have fired back at Whitman with more force, if not excessive force. An editor might have blasted him with something like:

It’s a newspaper’s job to inform the public about lying and violent-happy cops, especially when they get fired. That’s why we’re here. That’s how journalism holds public officials accountable. Rather than attacking us, Whitman might advise his own police force to behave better under the next chief, so that the Police Department’s problems won’t be in the newspaper. Until then, we’ll continue to give our readers the truth, to the best of our ability.

You probably won’t see anything like this in The Denver Post anytime soon, though I’m glad to see Post Editor Greg Moore defending the newspaper’s coverage more often on high-profile stories, including his newspaper’s handling of Mayor Michael Hancock’s alleged use of prostitutes and Scott McInnis’ non-use of a plagiarism checker.

You’re more likely to find outfits like “Fair and Balanced” Fox News get self rightious about what it does, even though it’s far less likely to be fair and accurate than the mainstream media in Denver.

Unfortunately, it seems that the more serious the news outlet, the less likely it is to get mad and defend itself, as if this is beneath it or something.

My advice is, fight back, while you still can.

Part of the reason Denver Post columnist Vincent Carroll is effective at getting under the skin of liberals is that he’s so good at mixing his opinion with interviews and other types of original reporting.

In my lowly way as a progressive blogger, I try to write like Carroll, with his edge and clear reporting, though he’s better at it (though his opinion is usually wrong, even if his facts are right).

So I read his column.

On Saturday morning, Carroll is very effectively ripping apart the county clerks, and at the end, he’s quoting from his personal interview with Secretary of State Scott Gessler.

For weeks, I’d been trying to ask Gessler–or anyone in his press office–a simple question about whether he thinks there’s fraud in Denver elections, and his office will not comment.

But he’s yapping it up with Carroll.

So I emailed Carroll:

I’m wondering, do you think Gessler or his media people should talk to me, even if I’m progressive, as they do you.

…what seems to bother Gessler’s spokesman the most about me is the fact that I crosspost on ColoradoPols, obviously a left-leaning blog.

I mean, it would be one thing if I were a progressive hatchet man, but I really don’t think I’m harder on the conservatives I interview than you are on the liberals who talk to you.

Carroll replied:

You are right that you are not a left-leaning hatchet man, but that doesn’t mean Gessler is under any obligation to talk to you.  Some people won’t take my calls, too.  Such is life in journalism.

Right.

But you’d think a public official would at least listen to the question, and if it’s a basic one, like whether there’s election fraud in Denver, and if the answer would serve the public interest, he’d respond, whether the questioner were progressive or conservative.

On Saturday, The Denver Post’s spot blog posted a story about Secretary of State Scott Gessler’s comments at a GOP lunch last week.

The Spot’s headline was “Republican Scott Gessler talks about the left: venom, hysteria and class warfare.”

The phrase “mainstream media” should have been added to that list.

Gessler took a serious whack at journalists during his speech when he said, according to a Spot transcript:

It’s really not the civil rights issue of the year. But I look at this venom and I think there’s a couple of things going on that we need to pay attention to as Republicans and conservatives.

And one is it seems pretty clear that to the left and particularly a lot of the mainstream media, Republicans are fine as long as they don’t make waves. And one is it seems pretty clear that to the left and particularly a lot of the mainstream media, Republicans are fine as long as they don’t make waves. Pat them on the head. ‘Good boys, good girls, Republicans.’ But when they actually make waves and challenge the status quo and challenge the way things have been done in the past, the left really gets upset. I think that’s in part what’s going on.

Unless he misspoke, Gessler apparently thinks a lot the “mainstream media” should be lumped together with the left.

In fact, judging from his use of the word “particularly,” it looks like he thinks the mainstream media are even more bothered than the left when Republicans get uppity.

You have to wonder if he’s got evidence for this.

Does he keep it in the same secret box with the evidence for fraud in Denver elections?

It seems crazy to me that in Colorado, you won’t necessarily get a ballot in the mail if you missed voting in just one election, and I haven’t seen much info reported locally on how other states deal with this issue.

So I got in touch with the Brennan Center for Justice, which got a bunch of national attention for its recent report about the menu of new rules around the country that tighten “restrictions on voting,” and it looks like Colorado is unique in its treatment of “inactive” voters.

Jonathan Brater, a Law Clerk with the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, wrote me that Colorado is one of just a handful of states that don’t mail ballots to all “inactive” voters, and Colorado rushes voters into the “inactive” category faster than any other state.

So, Brater points out that “in any other state, there would be no possibility that a duly registered voter would not receive a mail ballot simply because she missed one election.”

Our current research is not yet complete, but so far reveals Colorado is unique in a number of very relevant ways: Colorado is the only state we have identified where a person becomes inactive if they miss just one election.  Also, our research has not identified any other state that makes a statutory distinction among different classes of inactive voters. Additionally, Colorado is one of only a handful of states that do not mail ballots to voters designated as inactive. The third point is critical when combined with the first point because it means that, under Secretary Gessler’s proposed interpretation, registered voters are prevented from voting after missing a single election unless they submit to an onerous administrative process to “reactivate” their status.

Thus, there is not a relevant point of comparison in any other state; in any other state, there would be no possibility that a duly registered voter would not receive a mail ballot simply because she missed one election.    

This makes you think that Colorado’s apparent uniqueness looks pretty bad and may make moot Gessler’s argument that it’s not fair for one county to send ballots to inactive voters, while another county does send them.

As Brater wrote me, uniformity is an “important and a helpful goal,” but:

“A bad or illegal policy, however, is not desirable in one instance, much less uniformly.”

He added:

Furthermore, under Colorado’s election law, no scenario would provide for perfect uniformity.  The law states that counties may conduct mail ballot elections, which means that in certain elections, some counties will send mail ballots and others will not.  Under the circumstances, the best policy is to make sure as many registered and eligible voters are allowed to participate as possible.

I’ve been writing about the difficulty I’ve had getting anyone in Secretary of State Scott Gessler’s press office to return my call.

And then, finally, when I got Gessler spokesperson Rich Coolidge on the phone, he wouldn’t say much.

It turns out, Bob Moore, former Executive Editor of the Ft. Collins Coloradoan, got similar avoidance treatment from Coolidge.

In response to my crosspost on ColoradoPols about my exchange with Coolidge, Moore emailed me:

Coolidge stopped responding to me on Larimer GOP questions several weeks before I left. It was very strange. I used to be able to get him to respond virtually any time of the day. But after the dunking booth stuff, nothing. I would have made a bigger deal out of it if I wasn’t on my way out of town.

Moore, who is now the Editor of the El Paso Times in Texas, emailed me that he would have posted his comment on ColoradoPols himself, but he was having problems accessing his account. So he sent it to me and gave me permission to post it.

For weeks, I’ve been asking Secretary of State Scott Gessler’s media people if Gessler was serious when he said, in a radio interview, that “fraud exists” in Denver elections, and when, on another occasion, Gessler implied that there’s election fraud in Denver.

I’ve left lots of messages and gotten no response.

This surprised me, truly, because you’d think the Secretary of State would want to make it clear either way.

If he thinks there is really fraud, that’s obviously a huge problem that every active, inactive, and dead voter should hear about.

If there’s no fraud, then we should hear this, to put us at ease since Gessler previously said there was fraud.

So I was overjoyed Tuesday when I got Gessler’s media spokesperson Rich Coolidge, instead of an answering machine, when I called his direct line in Gessler’s press office. But disappointment followed.

Jason: Hi Rich. It’s Jason Salzman, a blogger in Denver. I’m very sorry to keep bothering you. I don’t know if you got my messages about whether there’s fraud in Denver elections?

Gessler’s spokesperson: I got the one last week, and we’re not going to comment to you.

Jason: Why?

Gessler’s spokesperson: We just don’t reach out to ColoradoPols bloggers.

Jason: I’m not a ColoradoPols blogger. I post there. You’ve talked to me in the past, and I thought I represent you fairly when you tell me a fact. And if I don’t, you can ask me, and I’ll put whatever you want to say in my blog.

Gessler’s spokesperson: I appreciate that. And you can write whatever you’re going to write, and we understand that. And we’re good to go. We’re not going to comment.

Jason: Isn’t it a basic question of whether you think there’s fraud in Denver elections? I mean, don’t you think that’s a question that you’d want to comment on?

Gessler’s spokesperson: Jason, you’re going to write what you want to write, and that’s fine.

Jason: Last time we talked…

Gessler’s spokesperson: You have your bent. You’re going to post on ColoradoPols. We don’t have anything to say. But thank you for your call. We are not going to comment.

Jason: What if I were just a citizen, or any person, worried about fraud?

Gessler’s spokesperson: You’re going to post it on ColoradoPols, and you are free to do that.

Jason: Well, I won’t. I have a blog; it’s called BigMedia.org, and I post on Huffington Post. If you don’t want it on ColoradoPols, I won’t put it on ColoradoPols.

Gessler’s spokesperson: You’re going to do what you’re going to do.  I don’t read your blogs and your pieces. You know, go ahead and write it. And that’s fine. We’re not going to comment. Thanks for your call. I’m going to let you go now.

Jason: There’s nothing I can do? Nothing at all?

Gessler’s spokesperson: No.

Jason: There’s no way we can negotiate this?

Gessler’s spokesperson: No thank you.

Jason: Well okay, thank you very much.

Gessler’s spokesperson: Thank you.

Jason: Have a good day.

Gessler’s spokesperson: You too.

Jason: Bye.

Gessler’s spokesperson: Bye.

Gessler’s spokesman is correct that I write from a progressive perspective.

But I hope that anyone who follows my work knows that I try hard to be fair and accurate, especially when I interview someone. I do my best not to misquote anyone or present their views out of context. I will always update my blog posts with whatever my interviewees want me to add, if they don’t like what I’ve written.

For about two weeks now, I’ve been calling Scott Gessler’s office most every day, trying to find out if he really believes there’s fraud in Denver elections.

It’s a pretty serious accusation, given that we like to think we live in a functioning Democracy and all.

Gessler made the fraud accusation once, for sure, on Oct. 2, when he claimed that “there’s a pretty high incidence of fraud in inactive-voters returned ballots” in Denver. And he may have said it last year, when as candidate he asserted there wasn’t “massive fraud” in the Denver elections office, but implied that there appeared to be a little bit of fraud happening.

You can’t assume your Secretary of State plays fast and loose with the “F” word, so if I were Gessler, I would have jumped at the chance to return my call, to make sure I had it right, even if I’m a lowly blogger.

And if I were a reporter at a legacy media outfit, I’d be chasing this story, as a public-interest matter.

In any case, it was good to see The Denver Post’s Sara Burnett tweet on Friday that the chief of Colorado’s elections office apparently disagrees with Gessler about fraud in Denver elections.

Here’s Burnett’s tweet:

sara_burnett: Head of SOS elections div says he’s not aware of any fraud regarding ballots mailed to inactive voters. #COpolitics

That’s a relief.

It’s also a relief that Denver Clerk and Recorder Debra Johnson denied Gessler’s fraud accusations categorically.

But you have to take it seriously when Colorado’s Secretary of State cries fraud and then won’t talk about it.

I know it’s been a really busy week for Gessler. In fact, it seems like every week is really busy for him.

 But still, I’m hoping his office returns my call. It’s not like I’m trying to find out if Gessler buys fancy dog food with his public-sector salary.

His accusation is disturbing. It was made in a public forum. It’s not too much to ask him to explain himself.

Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler has been denying that partisanship played any role in his decision to file a lawsuit to stop Denver from mailing election ballots to inactive voters, who last voted in the 2008 general election.

Gessler’s latest public denial of partisan-taint came on KHOW’s Caplis and Silverman Show last week, in response to a direct question from Silverman at 33 minutes in the podcast Sept. 28 show, 5 p.m. hour:

Silverman: Isn’t this just partisan on your part? Isn’t it because you’re thinking this will favor the Democrats?

Gessler: Absolutely not. Denver can’t do what it wants to do. It can do what it wants to do in a municipal election.

But in October, as he was running for office, Gessler said on a radio show that the large number of Democratic voters on the inactive voter lists concerned him, specifically because more Democrats than Republicans were on the inactive voter lists.

In fact, it concerned him so much that he implied that election officials in Democratic counties, which would include Denver, were managing their inactive voter lists in such a way as to favor the Democratic Party.

Gessler framed the issue in partisan terms, saying at the time that in counties with large numbers of Democrats, election officials are slow to clean up their lists of inactive voters.

“You have some heavily democratic counties that are less focused on cleaning up their databases than other counties,” Gessler told KOA’s Mike Rosen, Oct. 6, 2010, at 10:15 seconds in the podcast:

Rosen: I’ve got a report in front of me from the Secretary of State’s office, and it’s an official report. You can see  it online. And it has total registered voters by party affiliation and status. Among Republicans, we have 869,000 active voters and 199,000 inactive voters. Among Democrats, 825,000 active voters and 242,000 inactive voters….

Gessler: If they have not voted in the last general election they become inactive. And I think what you are seeing there, especially because of the heavy skew towards the large number Democrat inactive voters. I think that indicates variances in the counties and how focused they are. You have some heavily democratic counties that are less focused on cleaning up their databases than other counties. What you always look for to find out if there is a problem with the database is statistical anomalies. When there is something that pops out that seems a little unusual. Here there is something unusual there. You have two times, twice as many inactive Democrat voters as you do Republican voters. That is something that needs investigation. I am not saying there is massive fraud or anything there but that is very unusual to have those statistical anomalies.

I contacted Gessler’s office for a clarification. When he said, “less focused,” did he mean that clerks were deliberately putting less of a priority on cleaning up the inactive voter lists in order to promote Democrats?

Does he believe there’s a little bit of fraud going on here, even if there’s not the “massive” variety? Did his concern about the inactive voter lists play a role in his decision to file the lawsuit against Denver?

I’ll update this post when I get an answer.

Under normal circumstances, I’d slam KHOW’s Caplis and Silverman for letting Colorado’s Secretary of State breeze onto their show Wednesday, assert that there’s a “pretty high incidence of fraud” among one type of Denver voters, and then depart without being forced to explain what in the world he was talking about and what evidence he had to back it up.

But maybe Caplis and Silverman have heard Secretary of State Scott Gessler make so many unsubstantiated accusations of election fraud by now that it sounds normal, so normal that they think there’s no need for boring follow-up questions.

Whatever they were thinking, KHOW talk-show hosts Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman listened in silence Wednesday as Scott Gessler made the startling assertion that “Denver itself admitted” that sending election ballots to inactive voters has resulted in a “pretty high incidence of fraud.”

The issue arose last week when Gessler’s office sued to block Denver from mailing ballots for the Nov. 1 election to voters who haven’t cast a ballot since 2008 and did not respond to a letter asking if they wanted a ballot.

Gessler took the action partially to “reduce the potential for fraud,” according to the lawsuit.

But on the radio, Gessler sharpened his accusation, saying he was fighting fraud itself, not just theoretical fraud.

Gessler said [at the 37 minute point in the podcast]: But Denver itself admitted, there’s a pretty high incidence of fraud in inactive-voters returned ballots. They rejected in their municipal election well over 200. So we know fraud exists. The question is, what’s the extent and what’s the proper balance. The Legislature struck that balance. I’m going to respect it.

Denver has not admitted that there was any fraud resulting from ballots submitted by inactive voters, much less a “pretty high incidence” of it.

“I’m not sure what he [Gessler] is saying is fraud,” Denver Clerk and Recorder Debra Johnson told me. “He’s using the word fraud loosely.”

She said about 200 ballots in the 2011 Denver municipal election were found to have “signature discrepancies,” meaning the voter’s signature on the paper ballot was determined not to match the voter’s signature in Denver’s database. If a signature discrepancy is found, a voter is sent a letter and given eight days to clear up the matter.

“Every one of those is sent to the District Attorney,” Johnson told me. “And none of those has been identified as fraudulent by the DA.”

Johnson pointed out that it’s not just the inactive voters who have signature discrepancies, it’s also the active voters. ‘We pulled our numbers from the last election, and they were the same, in terms of the percentage of ballots returned,” she said.

The history of election fraud in Denver, it turns out, is deadly dull, even to a political junkie. And you’d have to think even Gessler, who seems to get excited about fraud even when it’s not really fraud, would find it dull as well.

The last case of election fraud in Denver that was actually prosecuted occurred in 2005 and involved a single voter, according to Amber McReynolds, Director of Elections for Denver. She added that, in 2009, a circulator of a petition was found to be fraudulently signing names, and turned over to the DA, and in 2010, the state of Arizona asked Denver for information about a person who voted in Denver and also attempted to vote in Arizona.

Gessler’s interview on Caplis and Silverman stands in stark contrast to comments he made Aug. 31, 2010, on KFKA’s Amy Oliver Show.

At the time candidate Gessler was attacking then Colorado Secretary of State Bernie Buesher for allegedly failing to ensure that Colorado complied with a federal law requiring overseas military personnel be sent election ballots 45 days before the 2010 election. In the end, Buescher found a way for Colorado to comply.

Radio-host Oliver laughed it up with Gessler, who said something that Caplis and Silverman should play back to Gessler next time he’s on their show:

Gessler said: “You’re the Secretary of State. What the heck is your job? Your job is to make sure people can vote. That’s one of your jobs!”

On Caplis and Silverman Wed., about a year after his appearance on KFKA, Gessler hadn’t completely forgotten this notion of trying to make sure people can vote.

Asked by Caplis what he thought Denver was trying to accomplish by sending ballots to inactive voters, Gessler said, “I’m guessing they are trying to increase the number of people who vote in the turnout from inactive voters.”

Silverman then asked Gessler why it “isn’t a good thing, if more people vote.”

“It’s good if you don’t have fraud,” he replied.

And since there apparently is no fraud, where does that leave Gessler?

I’m hoping Caplis will ask him next time he’s on the show. Letting him depart with a”keep-up-the-good-work” slap on the back is pretty hard to listen to.

With the partisan glow emanating ever more brightly from Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler, it’s worth taking a moment to think back on another SOS conflict-of-interest brouhaha that spilled out of the Secretary of State’s office in Colorado in recent years.

The local media hasn’t done much of this, so I’ll fill in the journalistic gap a bit here.

You may recall that a few months after Mike Coffman became Secretary of State in 2007, it was revealed that one of his new hires, Dan Kopelman, was running a partisan consulting business on the side. Kopelman was accused of selling SOS voter lists to Republican candidates. 

Kopelman was promoting his business on his website by highlighting his day job at the Secretary of State’s office.

Coffman admitted at the time that hiring GOP election consultant Kopelman to help oversee elections was a mistake, because of the appearance of conflict of interest, but he said he did not know Kopelman continued running the side business, illegal under state law, after he was hired. Kopelman was demoted and re-assigned. (Later, Colorado Ethics Watch filed a complaint against Coffman before the Colorado Independent Ethics Commission, alleging that he knew about Kopelman’s moonlighting biz. This was dismissed.)

Against the backdrop of secretary-of-state fiascos in Florida and Ohio, Coffman was quoted at the time as saying the Kopelman incident represented a “failure of leadership” on his own part. This is an expression of contrition that we haven’t yet heard from Gessler, even though Gessler has been acting as if conflict of interest is to be expected from the SOS, and he articulated this categorically when he told the Greeley Tribune in March that he hopes to use the SOS office to “further the conservative viewpoint.”

A couple weeks after Kopelman was accused of selling voter data (an allegation that was never proven), Coffman instituted personnel rules banning SOS staffers who worked on election matters from engaging in partisan political activities, including attending caucuses or conventions.

Coffman also told The Denver Post that he, personally, would not endorse or contribute to candidates or initiatives.

A BigMedia review of Coffman’s subsequent political donations from June 2007 to November 2008 shows that he did not contribute to candidates during his SOS service, but his wife did, and he, his wife, and his political groups gave a total of $2,625 to GOP political entities, according to state and federal databases. 

This includes $300 that his wife, Cynthia Coffman, gave directly to “Bob Schaffer for US Senate,” about month after her husband promised to stop donating to partisan candidates.

It also includes $1,629 given to GOP groups by Coffman himself, including $420 Coffman gave to the Jefferson County Republican Central Committee, $350 to the Arapahoe County Republican Party, and $300 he gave to the Douglas County Republican Central Committee. 

Coffman had to have known that groups like these collect money and, in turn, give much of it directly to candidates.

The rest of the $2,625 was donated to Republican groups by Cynthia Coffman ($312 to GOP groups plus the $300 for Schaffer) or by Coffman for Congress ($384).

Coffman gave an additional $2,216 to his own congressional campaign in 2008, which you’d have to count as a violation of his promise not to give to partisan candidates, unless he doesn’t count himself as partisan.

Apparently Coffman kept his promise about not making partisan candidate endorsements, though his office would not return my calls to confirm this or, for that matter, to comment for this post at all.

Gessler, on the other hand, has yet to donate to GOP candidates or groups, but he has taken endorsements to a new height, the presidential level, having thrown his weight behind Mitt Romney. 

Colorado’s last Secretary of State, Bernie Buescher, endorsed Cary Kennedy for Treasurer, and some other Colorado candidates.

Gigi Dennis, CO Secretary of State before Coffman, endorsed Bob Beauprez in 2006 and possibly others, she told me, adding, “I was always very careful about any endorsements, and I did not put my name on fundraising letters and invitations, that sort of thing.”

I didn’t ask her what she thought of Gessler’s dunk tank fundraiser.

“Secretary Gessler has an important role as the state’s chief elections officer,”  Jenny Flanagan, Executive Director of Common Cause, emailed me. “For voters to have confidence in our elections, they need to believe that the Secretary’s decisions are in the best interest of the state and not for the benefit of a particular candidate or political party.  To hold the public’s trust, the Secretary should refrain from partisan activities, whether it is endorsing candidates or fundraising for political parties.”

Some people thought Coffman’s post-Kopelman reforms didn’t go far enough, or were developed for self-serving reasons and ignored as Coffman ran for Congress, but a Post editorial at the time called the reforms “sound policy and should be a permanent rule in the secretary of state ‘s office, even after Coffman is gone.”