White House Yields to Gessler in Voter Verification Fight

DENVER–The Obama administration finally blinked Monday in its years-long stand-off with state elections officials by agreeing to cooperate with efforts to identify illegal voters in Colorado and other states.

Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler announced Monday that a Homeland Security official had agreed to check the state’s growing list of suspected non-citizen voters against a federal database, the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements [SAVE] program.

“As Colorado’s chief election official, protecting our elections is my top priority,” said Gessler in a statement. “I’m pleased that DHS has agreed to work with the states to verify the citizenship of people on the voter rolls and help reduce our vulnerability.”

The sudden change of heart comes days after the White House relented to Florida’s demand for access to the database of resident non-citizens, and a week after elections officials from 11 states backed Gessler’s call for the department’s cooperation in checking voter rolls.

In separate letters dated July 9, Gessler and Attorney General John Suthers urged the department to sign on to a memorandum of understanding outlining a process for checking the state voter rolls against the SAVE database....