The biggest problem with any election is misinformation, according to the Colorado Secretary of State’s office, which has been dealing with complaints about a website that alleges thousands of state voters have been purged from the voter registration rolls.

The website, gregpalast.com, claims to hold lists of purged voter registration information on six states, including Colorado.

Palast is a freelance investigative reporter, working on a project examining alleged voter purges with Rolling Stone magazine and the ACLU of Kansas, and is involved with the lawsuit against the state of Georgia over purged voters in that state.

Actor Mark Ruffalo (the Hulk in the Avengers movie series) tweeted out the link to Palast’s website Sunday.

Indiana Voters: 500,000 voter registrations have been purged. Make sure yours hasn’t been: https://t.co/20uQg01Xro

— Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) October 21, 2018

Linda Sorauf of Arvada contacted Colorado Politics on Friday to say that a family member had been notified that day that his name showed up on Palast’s list. She had been reading about the voter purge in Georgia and believed Colorado’s voter registration was pretty accurate.

They later checked govotecolorado.com, the Secretary of State’s Office voter registration website, and verified that his name was still on the voter rolls. The inaccurate information made her mad, Sorauf said.

The Palast website has no way to accurately identify the right person since it does not ask for specific date of birth information or ZIP code, both of which are required to check a listing on Colorado’s voter registration website.

Even Secretary of State Wayne Williams himself isn’t immune: a check of a voter by his name showed up on the Palast purge list, albeit with what’s likely to be the wrong birth year (1979).

Colorado Politics checked about 50 state legislators names and found at least a half-dozen, with likely accurate birth years, alleging those voters had been purged.

That included Rep. Lois Landgraf of Colorado Springs, who laughed when contacted and said she’d already received her ballot. The Palast website showed her name and an accurate birth year and said she had been purged from Colorado’s voter rolls.

Lynn Bartels of Williams’ office told Colorado Politics that officials there already have received several complaints about the website.

“We do not purge voters,” Bartels said. “What we have is a number of inactive voters. Those are voters who will not receive a mail ballot because their county clerk mailed them something and it came back as undeliverable. Ballots don’t forward.”

However, she said, those inactive voters are still eligible to vote. They can update their voter registration information at govotecolorado.com and if they do so by Oct. 29, they will get a ballot mailed to them. After that, however, they will have to go to a voter service center and vote in person.

Colorado as 600,370 inactive voters as of Oct. 1, Bartels said. That’s in contrast to the Palast website, which lists 769,436 “purged” voters on its list.

Given that Colorado has same-day registration, any inactive voters can go to a voting center right up until 7 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 6, and vote, Bartels said.

“The idea that we have purged people from the rolls is ridiculous,” Bartels said.

Asked for comment, Palast told Colorado Politics that “every name on the purge list was given to us by the Secretary of State. Of course, it’s more likely they lied to you – there’s no penalty for that.”

He also said that the reason he and his associates include only the voter’s first and last name is because they were given only that information, along with the birth year, by the Secretary of State and that only under a federal lawsuit.

“Colorado is the only state” that refused to give him more detailed information, such as address, ZIP codes and the date of birth, he said.

According to Bartels, it would be illegal under Colorado law to provide that information.