Saturday, April 14, 2007

Denver's five nonvoting political candidates

We care to know that political candidates show political leaders, so it is discouraging when they fail to fulfill even the most basic democratic responsibility to vote. Daniel Chacon of the Rocky Mountain News has investigated the voting records of the current candidates for municipal office, and found that five didn't vote at all in the January 2007 election.
They want your vote, but five candidates running for office in Denver in May didn't cast ballots in the last election.

Their reasons for not voting in January - when voters were asked whether to replace the troubled Denver Election Commission with an elected clerk and recorder - are as varied as the candidates.
Dennis Smith didn't remember receiving his ballot.

Bill Wells lost his ballot.

Greg Rasheed forgot to mail it.

Mitchell Poindexter said he didn't understand the question.

Waldo Benavidez thought it was a waste of money.

View the entire article online at "Five city candidates didn't vote in January election."

2 comments:

unifics said...

Hi.

The morale of this story is do as I say, not as I do. By the way, I asked the article's author if he voted in January. He said no. Must have been a very slow news day.

Peace,

Greg Rasheed
District 8 City Council candidate

Dave Burrell said...

A reader wrote in with the following comment. Because she was reluctant to open a Google account and had both a useful perspectinve and new information to offer, I have here posted the details for her:

Mitchell Poindexter said he didn't understand the question.

There are a thousand questions put to the Denver City Council every year. If Mitchell Poindexter can't understand a question that has been "on the table" for months how can he expect to quickly get up to speed and understand questions on a weekly basis?

On Council you don't have the option of saying "I don't understand the question." It's your public duty to understand.

Having delved further I found that the ONLY election Poindexter ever
bothered to vote in was November 2006.