Young woman in Colorado is recorded registering specifically Republican voters. Photo courtesy of VL TPVideoChannel/YouTube.com
A video of a woman registering people to vote went viral on YouTube on Friday, Sept. 21. The young woman in the video, whose name has not been released, was registering voters outside of a local grocery store in El Paso County, Colorado when the woman recording the video, also anonymous, approached her. When the woman registering voters asked the recorder who she was voting for, the recorder responded with, “Well, wait, I thought you were registering voters a minute ago.” The young girl confirmed that she was registering voters, so the recorder asked, “Well, who are you registering? All voters?” The young girl responded, “Well, I’m actually trying to register people for a particular party because we’re out here in support of Romney, actually.” The recorder then asked, “And who is paying you for this?” With hesitation and seeming rather confused, the young girl responded, “We’re working for the County Clerk’s Office.”
While registering voters, she asked prescreening questions and stated during the video that she was hoping to register Republicans, but that didn’t mean she was refusing to register other voters. El Paso County Clerk, Wayne Williams, told reporters that the woman registering voters was not staffed by his office and claimed, “My office does not and will not engage in partisan voter registration.” According to Williams, this woman was actually a paid employee for the Colorado Republican Committee. So it makes sense that she would want to register people who would vote for Romney, because she is supporting his campaign.
Eli Brenner, the El Paso County Republican Chairman, tells KOAA that it was the girl’s first day and she panicked. Brenner explains, “She knew that she was turning in all the registrations to the County Clerk and Recorder’s office and she knew that was the appropriate thing to do, and that’s how she answered.” Williams and Brenner concluded that the girl mistakenly stated she was working for the County Clerk’s Office because all of the voter registrations are to be collected and turned in to that office. Between first day nerves and potential stress of the questioning from the recorder, not to mention getting yelled at for her attempts to be honest, I don’t blame her for jumbling her words.
For the woman behind the camera, the young girl may have appeared to only be registering Romney voters when her first question was, “Who would you vote for? Romney or Obama?” Williams told KOAA, “You don’t have to offer a voter registration form to everybody,” but admits that denying someone a form based on their survey answer is illegal, and that is what the woman recording the video believed to be going on. This is a severe accusation. However, despite the video, there is no proof that the young woman was denying Democratic voters registration forms.
Bremer told reporters that the camera woman’s choice to release the video now, just before election time, was a campaign tactic. She stated, “The person who did this was a campaign operative. She was doing it for political reasons. She sat on the video for a month and now it’s been released to make political hay out of it, and I think that’s just simply unacceptable.” Bremer is entitled to her opinion, as are we all, but the El Paso County Democratic Party denies the claim.
The Chairman for the County Democratic Party, Christy Lelait, told News 5, “I don’t know of any campaign operatives here in El Paso County and I know for certain that the woman who shot this video is not a campaign operative. She’s a volunteer with several different organizations including the El Paso Democratic Party and she’s also a precinct chair.” The woman behind the camera declared that Democrats in that area do not pre-screen voters, and that is why she believed something illegal was happening.
El Paso County Republicans told KOAA that they still believe the whole thing was a ploy to distract voters from the real story of a young girl trying to get the candidate of her choice elected by campaigning within the law. Likewise, the El Paso County Democrats reported the whole incident shows poor training for volunteers at the Romney campaign and deny the Republicans’ charge that the release date was a campaign tactic.
I do not believe that this was sabotage any more than what political parties constantly do to each other during election time. However, I do feel that the video should be removed from YouTube, as was requested by the El Paso County Clerk’s office, because it contains inaccurate information, and it is causing too many assumptions and rumors among people who do not go to legitimate news sources to gather information.
Elaina Zintl can be reached at elaina.zintl@spartans.ut.edu
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