Montrose - Daily Press

Matt Hildner

Daily Press Writer

MONTROSE — After listening to Ken Gordon for a little while it can be difficult to tell whether he’s seeking votes or just encouraging all people to vote.

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Gordon came through Montrose Saturday in the midst of five-day Western-Slope swing in his campaign for Secretary of State and pledged to increase voter registration and access to the ballot.

The Colorado Secretary of State oversees the state’s campaign finance rules, elections and many corporate regulations.

“What I’ve always felt like is I wanted the process to work well,” said Gordon, who’s currently the Democratic majority leader in the state Senate. “I thought the values I cared about would come out all right if people were voting and understood the issues.”

Gordon, who’s running against Aurora Republican and former state Treasurer Mike Coffman, wants to increase voter turnout, which even in good elections is now around 50 percent of all registered voters.

“I’ve been telling people that if half the people vote we have half a democracy and in half a democracy the values of the American people don’t become the laws and policy of the county.” he said.

Voter registration is one spot where Gordon differs with his opponent.

Coffman has called for legislation that requires a government-issued photo ID card to register to vote, according to his campaign Web site.

Gordon, who has sponsored state legislation to make it a felony for anyone who votes illegally, does not think ID should be needed to register.

“The problem with that is it would have basically stopped all voter registration drives. It’s a needless barrier that would prevent American citizens from voting,” he said.

Both candidates have called for certified personnel to oversee the verification of electronic voting machines in the state. While Coffman pledges to form a bi-partisan task force to review voting systems in the next term, Gordon wants action now.

“We can’t forget about this election,” he said.

Although individual counties across the state have done testing on their voting systems, the Secretary of State’s office, currently led by Gigi Dennis, has been the subject of a lawsuit over the state’s testing of voting machines.

Gordon, like Coffman, has also been critical of a decision made by Dennis last month when she issued a ruling that would require the consent of individuals when their group makes a political contribution.

“She was doing something at the behest of one party -her party -and that’s wrong. And she was also doing it in August of an election year and that’s like doing it in the middle of the game,” Gordon said.

“If we were going to do that we probably should not let corporations participate without the consent of every single shareholder,” Gordon said, although he doesn’t advocate such a measure.

Gordon, who came to Colorado in the mid-1970s, was first elected to the state House of Representatives in 1992 and later to the Senate in 2000.

As with all of his previous races, Gordon has not accepted campaign contributions from political action committees.

“At the time (1992) I was concerned with trying to protect Colorado’s environment and I knew that the resource extractors — mining, oil and gas, real estate development — were big contributors to campaigns,” he said.

He believes the amount of money involved in elections fuels voter skepticism.

“They do have a distrust of representative government, and I think a lot of that has to do with how we fund campaigns.”

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