DENVER – Ethics Watch, a non-partisan, non-profit legal watchdog group, today called for a state audit of the Colorado Secretary of State’s (SOS) office to determine whether its employees have misused state resources for private gain. Ethics Watch also sent a Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) request to the SOS seeking information on events relating to a controversy involving Elections Technology Manager, Dan Kopelman.

It has recently been reported that Kopelman owns and operates the website PoliticalLiveWires.com, a partisan campaign consulting business selling voter data. Kopelman also serves as the Elections Technology Manager for the secretary of state’s office and his SOS salary is paid entirely with state tax dollars.

According to recent news stories, Secretary of State Mike Coffman claimed that Kopelman does not have access to the master voter file and other related information. Kopelman’s website, however, states his position “includes oversight and guidance of the development of the State Wide (sic) Voter database,” and many of the materials he provides to his clients include database information.

Although Secretary Coffman also told reporters that he had no knowledge of Kopelman’s consulting business, public records indicate that Coffman has known about Kopelman’s political business activities for years. Secretary Coffman’s candidate committee for secretary of state made two payments to Political Live Wires in 2005, and made numerous expenditures to Kopelman personally. Coffman’s previous campaign committees for other offices also show numerous transactions with Kopelman dating back to 1996.

Ethics Watch’s dual requests seek to determine whether Secretary Coffman or anyone else in the secretary’s office had knowledge of Kopelman’s business conflicts and misuse of voter files and whether efforts have been undertaken to hide that knowledge.