Working on campaigns, we would never mail to inactive voters for a simple reason: they didn't vote. Apparently, that paradigm has shifted, if you listen to ProgressNow.

According to its latest rant, “…those so called 'inactive' voters weighed in — at the ballot box.” Well, not all of them. Actually, not even some of them weighed in. It was more like a few. Statewide, 94.5% of the ballots mailed to inactive voters ended up in the garbage. In Denver, 52,861 of the 54,136 ballots mailed to inactive voters, or 97.6%, never returned. Though nothing to get excited about, 52% of active Denver voters didn't feel like casting their ballots either. But at least taxpayers got a better rate of return for the active voters.

It seems odd to me that the liberal establishment at ProgressNow is patting itself on the back for a 5% return rate. How embarrassing? In 2009, when counties were required to mail to inactive voters, the rate of return was 3%. But this year, even with a statewide issue on the ballot, we got 5% of those ballots back. Hooray for us!

I read somewhere that Denver pays about $2 per mailed ballot. So, the cost to mail to the inactive voters was an extra $108,272 per election. Considering that Denver held three elections in 2011 between city elections and the November election, taxpayers forked over at least $325,000 in junk mail to these inactive voters.

Maybe this could be a selling point for Mayor Hancock's agenda to increase trash fees, since Denver's trash cans are weighted down with unvoted ballots.