A December 15 article in The Pueblo Chieftain reported that after leaving office in January, Colorado Secretary of State Gigi Dennis (R) will be taking a job with an electric power cooperative, but the newspaper failed to note recent election controversies that raised questions about Dennis' performance in office. These included a judge's ruling that her office failed to properly certify state voting machines used in the November 7 election and another judge's ruling against her implementation of a Republican-backed campaign finance rule change affecting so-called “small donor” campaign committees.

From the December 15 Chieftain article by Karen Vigil:

Colorado Secretary of State Gigi Dennis is joining a private wholesale electrical supply company when she leaves office in January.

Dennis, a former Pueblo legislator, will become the senior manager of government relations of Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, which is based in Westminster, Colo., according to J.M. Shafer, the company's executive vice president/general manager.

The Chieftain also quoted Shafer as praising Dennis' “knowledge,” “expertise in [her] respective field[s] and past experience.”

On the same day, the Rocky Mountain News (accessed through the Nexis database) reported in a news brief that Dennis, “whose term ends Jan. 8, will head Tri-State's government relations staff beginning in late January.”

Tri-State's website states that it “is a wholesale electric power supplier owned by the 44 electric cooperatives that it serves. Tri-State generates and transports electricity to its member systems throughout a 250,000 square-mile service territory across Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico and Wyoming.”

In its summary of Dennis' career as a Colorado politician, the Chieftain failed to mention her involvement in two prominent controversies related to the 2006 election. As Colorado Media Matters has noted (here and here), the Chieftain previously has underreported Dennis' role in these controversies.

As the state's top election official, Dennis made changes in August to state campaign finance rules, one of which, according to an August 25 News article, “was taken verbatim from a recommendation by GOP attorneys John Zakhem and Scott Gessler,” who represented Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez's campaign, the state Republican Party, and the Republican-backed Trailhead Group. Gov. Bill Owens (R), one of the founders of Trailhead, appointed Dennis to her position as secretary of state. The same News article reported:

[2006 candidates for Colorado Secretary of State] Democrat Ken Gordon and Republican Mike Coffman said it was unfair for Dennis to decide in August that “membership organizations” must get permission from individual members annually before their dues can be used in political campaigns.

Previously, the dues were automatically deducted and the groups, such as unions, then transferred money to small-donor committees to push for certain candidates.

As the News reported on September 29, “The Colorado Court of Appeals on [September 28] rejected Secretary of State Gigi Dennis' Aug. 2 ruling that limited union donations to political campaigns, agreeing with a lower court that she probably overstepped her authority.”

Dennis also was involved in a controversy regarding her office's efforts to comply with the requirements of the Help America Vote Act by certifying the voting machines used in the November 7 election. On September 22, Denver District Judge Lawrence Manzanares ruled that “Dennis' office never created minimum security standards for the [voting] machines [as required by state law]” and that “the state did an 'abysmal' job of documenting testing during the certification process.” Following Manzanares' decision, The Denver Post reported on September 23 that “Coloradans will head to polls in November with the lowest level of confidence in recent memory, experts say, after a judge condemned the methods used to certify electronic voting machines across the state.”

The Post further reported that, according to Manzanares, Colorado's voting “machines still can be used because 'decertifying all the machines in the state ... would create more problems than it would solve.' ” The same article also noted, “But after the election, the machines will have to be certified again under a better process, the judge ruled.”

The News reported after the election that voters at some polling centers in Denver had waited “two and three hours to vote” on Election Day while some voters in Douglas County waited in “lines as long as 5 1/2 hours.” Following the election, the Chieftain reported that Dennis said, regarding those delays, “I find it amusing that people will stand in line for three days to get a new PlayStation, but they complain about a couple of hours in line to vote.”

Colorado Media Matters has cited (here, here, and here) other instances of misinformation in the Colorado media's coverage of Dennis.