Greenpeace has fired one of its key Colorado officials, Christen Topping, over her comments condoning the creation of fraudulent ballots using that state’s vote-by-mail system. She went beyond that and told filmmaker James O’Keefe the exact street corner in “ghetto Aurora” where he could find ballots in trash cans that could be fraudulently mailed in. She said residents of the “ghetto” were unlikely to vote because they “don’t really care.”
Greenpeace spokesman Molly Dorozenski said Topping’s statements were not in accord with the values of Greenpeace and “her contract has been terminated.”
O’Keefe now wants to know what Alan Franklin, the CEO of Work for Progress, a liberal activist group whose literature clearly states it is working to reelect Democratic senator Mark Udall in Colorado, will respond to his video. Franklin’s state director, Meredith Hicks, told O’Keefe that committing voter fraud using unused ballots was perfectly okay. “That’s not even lying or stealing, if someone throws out the ballot. If you want to fill it out you should do it,” she told O’Keefe on tape.
When the TV station FOX31 in Denver finally reached Hicks yesterday for her reaction to O’Keefe’s video she was apparently nervous. She “initially told FOX31 Denver she knew O’Keefe but then said she didn’t recall” the conversation she had with him just a few days before. “I don’t have anything to say about that,” she said.
O’Keefe told me he is curious if Franklin will follow the lead of Greenpeace and fire an employee who clearly condones the casting of illegal ballots, and, indeed, thinks it isn’t akin to “lying or stealing.”