SoS Coffman denies problems with employee, denies problems with voting machines, denies problems with lobbyists

Well, well, well, Mike Coffman looks to be Colorado's own scandal generating Republican:

Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman faced a deluge of criticism Thursday over revelations that a firm hired to lobby his office on behalf of an electronic voting-machine company also does work for his congressional campaign.

The controversy stems from the already heated debate over certification of voting machines. Earlier this week, Coffman decided to decertify some machines used to count ballots in several Colorado counties, while conditionally approving others, including all the machines used in the state from Texas-based Premier Elections Solutions.

A state testing panel recommended that none of the machines be certified.

Mike Coffman thinks we should loosen the rules to re-certify the failed machines:

Secretary of State Mike Coffman said there are major problems with security and accuracy among the various electronic voting systems used in Colorado.

He told lawmakers Tuesday that he's forging ahead with a plan to fix those problems and will then ask legislators to affirm his decisions."We need to hold a presidential election in 2008 and following an inflexible bureaucratic process is not going to get us there," Coffman said.

The "bureaucratic process" is what found these machines to be failing, Mike. And oh, by the way, Coffman is overseeing election decisions that will surely affect his run for congress in Tom Tancredo's old seat.

And finally, Mike Coffman still hasn't appropriately addressed the voter data scandal that happened in his office, under his watch:

The Colorado State Auditor issued a blistering report on the management of the state Secretary of State's office under Mike Coffman. The report found eight major areas of failures in the office, including duplicate voter registration records, voting by dead people and felons, failing to account for $445,000 in federal funds, and numerous conflict-of-interest violations among employees, at least some of which Coffman was aware of, the report says.

All in all, Mike is shaping up to be your standard Republican politician on a Colorado scale.

Heckuva job, Mike....