(orig. pub. March 16, 2016)
With a blood moon risin’, another scary big money issue was thrust upon Denver residents–and approved by ghost voters–at the November 3, 2015, election. I speak, of course, of the National Western Stock Show initiative, which will pump nearly $1 billion into the private bank accounts of people already so rich it makes one heave. We are told it passed by 65% to 35%. I’m here to tell you that’s as phony as the goblins and ghosts who came to your door on Hallowe’en (and no less beggarly).
It passed because, although every real Denverite you will ever find opposed this ballot issue, Denver elections are rigged to deliver lopsided outcomes. Let there be no doubt: Denver voters really, really love this tax!
The outcome of mail ballot elections is easily co-opted, the reason they are favored by the beneficiaries of big money issues such as bonds and taxes; and in Denver, there are no checks against graft. Take a look at these five mail ballots received at one resident’s address, for example.
None of those people, former roommates of his, live there anymore. I communicated with one who now lives in Alaska, where she registered to vote in 2012. So she was never removed from Denver’s registration list. Although the Denver resident who received these ballots was too upstanding to vote them, other people have no such scruples; and if you believe election officials can separate real ballots from forgeries–or even care–you may well deserve all the tricks the ghouls play on you.
I have special knowledge about Denver’s mail ballot elections, since I represented former election commissioner Jan Tyler (pro bono) in a 2007 court case contesting the special election held by mail ballot on Jan. 30, 2007. This election amended Denver’s Home Rule Charter to abolish the Denver Election Commission, vesting power over elections nominally in the clerk and recorder (but the power is exercised by her appointee, the director of elections (Sec. 8.1.2(D)(2)). Denver residents were not even aware this election was taking place, because there was no published notice of it (see p. 6, et seq.). There was also no publication of the text of the charter amendment itself. These omissions were brazen violations of the Colorado Constitution, Denver Charter, Denver ordinances, and state laws governing charter amendments, and meant this amendment was–and continues to be–void on its face.
On Dec. 26, 2006, a published notice did appear, but only of a hearing on Council Bill 831 to be held that very evening—the day after Christmas!–at 6:00 p.m. The text of this bill was not even published, despite false certificates saying it was (p. 40 of 47 and Exhibit D), made by officials whose signatures are not legible, undoubtedly because they knew they were pulling a fast one. Moreover, this notice appeared in only The Daily Journal, which is not the “newspaper of general circulation” required by law (pp. 10-11). Quite the opposite: The Daily Journal caters to the construction trades and is available literally nowhere. In our case, nonpublication of the charter amendment, as well as of the calling of the special election on a date only 35 days away—when Denver ordinance prohibits any special election to be held within 60 days of the call–were central issues. Either one on its own meant the election was void, as the court cases I cited in in our cross-motion for summary judgment established. The single subject requirement was also violated: Denver City Council purported to exempt itself, in the body of Council Bill 831 (which became Ordinance 851), from its own law (§3.3.5(B), D.R.M.C.) requiring each legal effect of the bill to be expressed in the title. That exemption was not expressed in the title. (And see this one, where the City Council did away with restrictions on the use of public funds to promote candidates shortly before then, again not expressed in the title.)
The manner in which the Jan. 30, 2007, special election was conducted also overwhelmingly militated for throwing the result out. The amendment was approved by 36,934, out of 54,481 votes reported cast—68% for and about 32% against, another ridiculously lopsided outcome–while 133,000 ballots were wholly unaccounted for and an additional 50,000 ballots were returned as undeliverable (pp. 12-14 and 74-76). Contrast this travesty with a polling place election, where every single ballot is accounted for. Ironically, even though thousands of mail ballots can be unaccounted for with gay abandon, it remains a criminal offense to remove a single ballot from a polling place (Sec. 31-10-1512, C.R.S.)
Even the U.S. Postal Service complained to the Secretary of State about the gross mismanagement of this 2007 election. USPS said it processed 310,000 ballots, which was 22,611 ballots more than the number of voters the Denver Election Commission said were registered for the Jan. 30 election and 36,122 more than were registered for the Nov. 2006 election. Exhibit C to our amended complaint. Thus, the DEC knowingly sent out a flood of bogus ballots. To whom did these spurious ballots go? Were they voted? Under the direction of John Gaydeski, the staff ran this election like the Keystone Kops, chasing in circles waving nightsticks (pp. 68, 71-77).
The Jan. 30 election was the more suspicious because of the debacle of the November 2006 polling place election which preceded it. The electronic registration system broke down (they said), and thousands of voters were made to stand in line for up to four hours, many leaving in disgust without voting. This screw-up—followed directly by the “solution” of the January special election by mail ballot–looked, even then, like a set-up, manufactured to make Denver residents so fed up with the Election Commission they would scrap it, and bombard them with so much propaganda about the superiority of mail ballot elections that they would get rid of their time-tested, reliable polling-place elections, as well. Both Denver newspapers shamelessly pushed this “solution” to the imaginary problem. In fact, a blue-ribbon panel convened to study the DEC the prior summer had concluded no changes were needed.
There’s more. John Gaydeski–even after resigning in the wake of the November 2006 debacle–magically reappeared to mess up the Jan. 30, 2007, special election, too. The clerk and recorder in Nov. 2006, Wayne Vaden, was kicked upstairs to a “consulting contract” with the City paying $150/hr. The DEC’s “technology chief,” Anthony Rainey, placed on administrative leave for two months after November 2006, collected over $14,000 during that period before leaving for real on Jan. 21, 2007. Over and over, we see those officials responsible for election fraud castigated to a limited degree publicly, and then quietly compensated–handsomely–after it all blows over.
Given the handling of Jan’s complaint by the Denver judge, Michael A. Martinez–and Martinez’s subsequent elevation to Chief Judge of the Denver District Court–we can conclude Martinez was one of those same beneficiaries (and benefactors) of city bosses. He ignored this case, initially filed by Jan before the election and amended after I came on on March 9, 2007, sitting on our request for injunction and cross-motion for summary judgment and response to Denver’s motions to dismiss for two months. The hearing he held on June 7 he then specifically said was NOT on our request for injunction. It was on Denver’s motions to dismiss, variants of which the city filed three times, based almost completely on insufficient service of process. This, although Denver was in the case vigorously defending, with two attorneys who filed motions on a wide variety of subjects and called witnesses. This meant the defense–even if it had merit, which it didn’t–was waived.
So, let’s focus on what’s important here, eh, Judge?
After three hours of hearing on June 7, 2007, Judge Martinez held service was proper! However, in a sweet syrupy voice he went on to hold that there was “no jurisdiction” to rule on our request for injunctive relief, and that the city council was “immune from suit” (around 5:34*) because the judicial branch has no power over the legislative (city council). Is he really that stupid? In our cross-motion for summary judgment I had provided him several cases where ordinances, as well as elections, were invalidated for failure to follow procedures specified by law. The courts in these cases called them “pretend elections.” Injunctions against the implementation of completed legislative acts do not constitute “judicial interference with legislative authority,” as any first-year law student knows. Martinez even concocted an excuse for nonpublication which the City had not dared make, based on two blizzards which shut Denver down in the last days of December 2006. He regarded it as more important to let this hastily and ill-conceived greed-train barrel through unimpeded, than to uphold the Colorado Constitution, let alone statutes and ordinances. The most damaging blizzards suffered by Denver residents over that Xmas/New Year’s holiday thus were from bogus mail ballots, as longtime editorial writer Vincent Carroll wryly noted in two columns in the Rocky Mountain News. He received three ballots for unknown people at his home. I tried to get one of his columns into evidence, and Judge Martinez excluded it as hearsay (pp. 69-70), even though C.R.E. 807 permits hearsay which has substantial guarantees of trustworthiness. Jan and I did not know Vince Carroll. He was not trying to benefit Jan’s case. Unlike in the Nov. 2015 election to feed the Stock Show piggies, eight years later, we did not have other evidence of a voter’s receipt of multiple ballots.
In short, we did not just get a pretend election in Denver, in 2007. We got a pretend hearing, too.
A case can be made that we were also before a pretend judge. Martinez was admitted to the bar in 1987 and started his career on the bench as a magistrate in the 17th Judicial District (Adams County), sometime before 1997. His admission to the bar and appointment to the bench may come back, again, to Notre Dame grad and fixer John Moye, who sat on, and chaired, the Board of Law Examiners from 1981-91 (and, incidentally, represents the National Western Stock Show!) In his capacity as a bar examiner Moye had access to the bar exams before as well as after they were given, and oversaw their grading, even while running a bar refresher course. During the same period, Moye sat on the 2nd Judicial District nominating commission, which is Denver. I have seen, but now cannot find, a reference that he instituted a loan program for law students, as well.
In other words, a great number, if not all, of the Catholic lawyers and judges in Colorado, particularly Hispanics under cover of affirmative action, may owe their careers to John Moye. As a “good businessman,” he is the type to call in his chits. While there are other powerful operators in Denver, the official positions he held link Mr. Moye to the flood of judges having thinly veiled contempt for the law, along with dispiritingly poor legal ability, in the Colorado judicial system since the 1980’s. See my four posts on John Gleason, who I’ve shown was just given a “bar ticket” in 1985, since he has no undergraduate degree, and protected the judicial goons, as well as corrupt attorneys. Michael A. Martinez’s role is to legitimate politically expedient outcomes such as Denver’s rigged elections, law be damned.
I had later encounters with Martinez which buttress this view. I filed a complaint in Denver District Court in 2010 alleging the collusion of Rebecca Alexander, the attorney for Gary Magness—the billionaire against whom I got a sizable judgment–with April Seekamp, the Nazi whore who pursued me for over four years, on instructions from John Gleason, without a client complaint. As in the present matter, Martinez dismissed my case in blatant violation of the rules, in the same breath slapping me with a $100,000 attorney fee sanction, an obvious punishment for exposing this corruption. His subsequent elevation to Chief Judge of the Denver District Court makes it abundantly clear how much his patrons value Martinez’s protection of their rackets. In 2022, I made a request under the Colorado Open Records Act for all emails in his possession having my name in them, and the palace guard–let it be said Colorado court personnel are always ALL Catholic–withheld six, without any grounds.
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3/24/16: Just googled “Trick or Treat Denver,” and in 27 pages of Google results this post does not come up. Such things as trick or treating in Denver in 2006 come up! Then I saw in the bowels of the blog that the option to comment had been removed–a box was checked that I had never checked. I think it is fixed now!
*7/15/24: Finally restored this post on this WordPress blog, but have not yet figured out how to make the audio recording of the hearing work. Here is the folder containing the “‘”FTR player” and audio segments of the hearing. Maybe you can figure out how to make it work!