Noncitizen voters ID'd fraction of those first alleged by Gessler

... earlier this month, Gessler, a Republican, announced that his office had found only 141 people who were noncitizens registered to vote out of 1,416 names run through a federal database, and of those 141, only 35 who had cast ballots.

...  his search process so far has been limited, looking only at people who have gotten driver's licenses since 2006, and didn't include people who may have used noncitizen documents to get driver's licenses in other states and then moved to Colorado and gotten a driver's license here.

Gessler's office in 2011 identified 11,805 people as having used noncitizen documents to get driver's licenses and who might have been improperly registered to vote. Of those, 4,214 had voted at some point...

Gessler mailed letters to 3,903 people who had used noncitizen documents to obtain driver's licenses and then registered to vote, asking them to either prove their citizenship or withdraw from voter rolls. Sixteen people voluntarily withdrew their names from voter rolls, while 482 submitted proof of citizenship. There were 1,011 letters returned as undeliverable because of no forwarding addresses.

For the remainder, Gessler's office was able to run checks on only 1,416 because it did not have alien registration numbers for the others. Of those, ultimately 144 were determined to be noncitizens registered to vote.

While Gessler concedes his office hasn't found "thousands of noncitizens" registered or who may have cast ballots as first thought, he says he released those original numbers because he was being transparent. The numbers have decreased as his office has gotten better and clearer information along the way, and he has shared those numbers too, he said.