Forged signatures that Denver7 uncovered on petitions for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jon Keyser would have likely been caught by Denver election workers if he had been running for local office. The Secretary of State’s Office only verifies that the name and address on candidate petitions match the name and address on file with the voter’s registration. State law does not allow the Secretary of State to verify the actual signature. Denver’s charter requires Denver election workers to verify the cursive signature on a petition with the cursive signature on file on multiple databases.
“Any time we have a petition signature in the door, we actually do a match against the SCORE statewide voter registration database,” said Denver Election Division spokesman Alton Dillard.
Denver7 was the first to uncover forged signatures on the petitions that helped Keyser qualify for the U.S. Senate primary ballot. Since our multi-part investigation, the Secretary of State’s Office revealed that it was warned by a petition verifier that she had concerns in mid-April that some of the petition signatures might have been written in the same handwriting. Two days later, that staffer also alerted the Secretary of State’s Office to the signature of a dead voter. Workers at the Secretary of State’s Office did not see the similar handwriting and told the staffer to continue verifying signatures.
Full Article: Denver, unlike the rest of the state, is able to verify signatures on ballot petitions – 7NEWS Denver TheDenverChannel.com.