Democrats in Colorado are withdrawing their voter registrations at a rate five times higher than Republicans. That’s according to data from the Colorado Secretary of State’s office, which maintains voter records. The withdrawals follow news that the state would provide voter information to comply with President Trump’s investigation into voter fraud.
As of July 14 (Friday), 3,738 Coloradans had withdrawn from the voter rolls. Of those, 54 percent are registered Democrats and 33 percent are unaffiliated. About 10 percent are Republicans.
Voter Registration Withdrawals by Party
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Lynn Bartels, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Wayne Williams, said the overall number of withdrawals is low. They represent about one-tenth of one percent of the roughly 3.7 million registered voters.
Still, many county election officials around the state say they’ve never seen a surge of withdrawals like this before. Williams has tried to reassure Coloradans that he won’t release any data that’s not already part of the public record by law.
“It’s my hope that folks who withdrew their registration will re-register,” said Williams in a statement to KUNC, “particularly once they realize that no confidential information will be provided and that the parties and presidential candidates already have the same publicly available information from the 2016 election cycle.”
The commission’s request for data is suspended following a complaint filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a national privacy watchdog group. In the complaint, EPIC contends that the commission failed to do a report on possible privacy dangers before asking for data, as required by federal law.
There were another 200 people who have opted to make their voter information confidential. Democrats make up more than half of that number.
