President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Kamala Harris
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) V. Archuleta
98%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Marshall Dawson
95%
5%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
50%
50%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(D) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank
(D) River Gassen
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) John Fabbricatore
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen
(R) Sergei Matveyuk
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
70%↑
30%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
April 22, 2010 04:21 PM UTC
34 Comments
Let’s not forget the culpability of the Denver Post in helping concern troll this bill to death. The only result of a bill like this is that more people would participate in our democracy, and that’s what Dick Wadhams and these county clerks (who will be on the ballot) are most afraid of.
Shame.
The clerks spoke out(from both parties)before Wadhams weighed in and I can personally count a number of D’s and U’s who did not favor this going forward this year.
The bill started as a conversation with the clerks. Some clerks had misgivings but they were still at the table. Then came Wadhams and Gessler and ACORN, and rational discussion ended. That’s the point, and it’s exactly right.
it is their JOB to facilitate Elections…
or is it more like they fear actually working?
Nah it is the fear of more people Voting in Elections! thus undermining incompetents Job security.
The original Constitution is where these folks think… only white male Land Owners should be eligible to vote eh?
Running this as a late bill just months before the election was what killed it. If it could have been fixed up well enough to pass, that would have happened Tuesday during the closed-door meeting between Carroll and the Clerks.
The reforms are where they belong now–before a Best Practices Commission. What will emerge from that Commission will be a much better product than the Draft I read.
The Clerks DO want these reforms. But implementing them right now was problematic.
n/t
if I recall correctly. I’m not thrilled to see this shot down but I’ve heard concerns coming from a wide range of folks on this one, mostly that it hadn’t been entirely thought out. This gives them a chance to go back to the drawing board and work out the kinks instead of trying to implement something half-conceived during an election year.
There was some good stuff in the bill. There was some bad stuff too. It needed work. I didn’t feel there was time this session to give it the work it needed.
I was told that there was overwhelming support from the Clerks for most of the reforms. I don’t know if that translated to overwhelming enthusiasm, however.
I think a better bill will come out of the Commission process.
Don’t legislators get to propose amendments? Isn’t that the whole point of bringing a bill to the floor? Sorry, don’t agree. They should have dropped the bill, let the GOP defend their fearmongering on the record, and amend where concerns are legitimate.
But this wasn’t about legitimate objections.
to be engineered with floor amendments with three weeks left in the session?
I didn’t.
When was the last time a bill passed without amendments? That doesn’t make any sense.
You’ve bought their frame, my friend. I guess it doesn’t matter now, except as a post mortem. Your comments are helpful for understanding what happened, but not encouraging.
of Democratic fear, gutlessness and lack of conviction.
It is unconscionable that so many adults in this state are prevented from voting by the Republican focus on preventing democracy.
The Democratic majority at the Capitol was elected to advance the party’s goals and values, and one of them is assuring fair election laws that don’t exclude people because of their race or socio-economic status.
But here, as with many other areas of public policy, the Democratic leadership is so frightened of Wadhams and the big, bad Denver Post that it won’t even fight.
Disgusting. And the Democrats wonder why so many of those of us who voted for them in 2004, 2006 and 2008 might not vote this fall.
and don’t vote this fall, then you’re really a Republican, or might as well be.
I don’t know if this was a good call or not by Speaker Carroll. And it may well be that a lack of political courage is a legitimate criticism of our current leadership. But it is also true that these decisions involve complex calculations, considering the entire agenda and the sustained ability to keep moving it forward.
Speaker Carroll is term-limited in the House (though of course he can then run for the state senate, or for other elected office). I, for one, don’t believe that it is this practicing attorney’s and soon-to-be-former Speaker’s fear of losing his $30K/yr job in the state legislature that tempers him, but rather his calculations concerning what best serves the Democratic agenda over the long run.
You may agree or disagree with those calculations. You may be disgusted that those in office lack your unique wisdom on these matters. But if you are so disgusted by their failure to be you that you choose not to vote, despite your agreement with the agenda that they are trying to advance, then the failure, IMHO, is all yours.
Ummm.. don’t you think that’s just a wee bit over the top?
If you’re even remotely concerned about voting, it’s remarkably easy to register. If you can get to the DMV to register your car or renew your license, you can register to vote. If you buy food, wait until 2 months before the election, then you will likely see someone outside of you favorite grocery store registering voters.
That said, with the technology available today, it should be easy to register and vote on election day. There’s no good reason to have to register 6 weeks before an election anymore.
The Republicans aren’t preventing democracy, they’re playing this for partisan advantage, that’s all. I expect you could find examples where Dems done something comparable.
As ajb said, it’s easy to register. It’s easy to vote.
Election day registration, on the other hand, would be a problem. The clerks have to be able to make it secure and fraud-proof.
Those of you on the Front Range may find this hard to believe, but in many Colorado counties there are no reliable on-line connections to instantly verify registration.
The part of the bill that allowed for third-party collection of ballots is also ripe for fraud, from all sides of the spectrum.
As Ralphie said, better to pull it back and do things properly.
You do realize that right now there is NO regulation of this at all, don’t you? This bill would have regulated that for the first time, and require anyone involved to be registered with the SoS. It would have TOUGHENED the standards, not weakened them.
I’m in awe of how pervasive the right wing talking points are against this bill. They did a really good job getting them out there, so good that Democrats repeat them too. Stunning.
The law says you can’t handle more than 5 ballots, which has been widely interpreted as you can’t handle more than 5 ballots at the same time, though a couple of clerks interpret that to be 5 ballots per election cycle, others 5 ballots per day. But it’s never enforced because there are so many ways around it.
And the third-party collection thing is a red herring. Third parties already do it, they just aren’t allowed to hand more than 5 at a time to the clerk’s office, so they just drop them in the night deposit instead, or hang on to them longer and deliver 5 at a time, or get a bunch of volunteers to go in with 5 each. It’s a stupid rule that’s impossible to enforce, so it needs to be stricken.
Why not? Because some Republican clerks don’t like voting?
A wasted opportunity indeed.
There were problems with the draft that was made public a while, a I expressed my concerns over those problems here at the time.
However, they were things that could have been corrected either before introduction, or during the amendment process.
My hope is that the issues can be worked out and a cleaner bill can be introduced earlier in the session in 2011. Of course, I say this every year, and it still ends up being a late bill.
Note to legislators (and you KNOW you all read this): Don’t wait for the Clerks. There are 64 of them with the full gambit of ideas about elections and political philosophies. They will never agree so move forward with information garnered from conversation that have already happened.
This wasn’t Republican Clerks opposing the bill, it was the Clerks. And let’s be clear on the process of this bill.
Before January Clerks and the SOS spoke about getting a mail in ballot bill introduced in 2010. Obvious reasons why all Clerks would like this idea.
January, 2010: SOS and Clerks have further conversations and Clerks are told there will be a bill during the ’10 session.
February, 2010: nothing
March, 2010: nothing
April, 2010: Clerks are told a draft is coming. Finally, when it does appear, with no input, or very limited input, from the Clerks, the bill includes provisions that had not been discussed prior.
These provisions came from Common Cause, the AFL-CIO, the League of Women Voters and other union organizations.
With no notice prior to the draft, with no opportunity to tamp down partisanship through an open dialogue, is it any wonder there was the initial reaction to the draft?
While it is a shame the bill was too heavily influenced by unions and policy people with little knowledge of how elections run in CO, I applaud the Speaker’s willingness to bring the topic to the table and his wisdom in not moving forward with a divisive bill this late in the session.
The SOS, Judd Choate and the election advocate organizations are to blame for this draft dying, not the Clerks, Republican or Democrat.
The bill was drafted with the clerks’ lobbyist in the room with full input from said lobbyist. The clerks’ lobbyist was at every meeting. If the clerks don’t like the way their lobbyist communicates with them, maybe they need to fire their lobbyist.
I don’t care if the Clerk’s lobbyist was in the room, the Clerks weren’t. My timeline is accurate and honest.
It isn’t the responsibility of the SOS and Judd Choate to deal with a lobbyist alone. If what you say is true, which I’m not believing, but if what you say is true, Choate, the SOS and the Speaker’s office still screwed up by trusting that lobbyist instead of sharing the conversations with the professionals who run elections in this state.
So my point stands, the Clerks were not informed of the progress, the language, the intent and the timeline before April when the draft bill became public.
Any attempt to spin this as partisanship killing the bill is wrong. Successful election reform bills in the past included open and honest dialogue between advocates and the Clerks. This bill could have passed if that had been part of the process this year.
they are a radical bunch, aren’t they.
You should see some of their parties…
I’m not ripping on them, my point is one side of the election camp wrote this bill without involving the other side and then sprung it with very little time for debate and passage.
Not all counties are as fortunate as I am to have first rate C & Rs with a top notch person over elections. Many smaller(and I would bet a number of large)county election offices have struggled to meet current laws, standards and rules. I don’t for a minute think the SOS and the clerks made this into a partisan issue. The Speaker and the SOS made the right decision and hopefully next year we can go forward with a better elections bill.
made this into a partisan issue
Well, no, Dick Wadhams did, and gleefully. Whether the clerks, SOS and legislators could have worked something out was moot once Wadhams started shouting “ACORN” and the caucus echoed it.
Wadhams ever met an issue he didn’t put a partisan spin on – even ones he likes. Carville does the same thing quite often on CNN to a much larger audience. Both enjoy hearing/reading their little quotable quotes. 🙂
The Republicans have long sought to suprress turnout.Burke talked about this as a conservative a couple centuried ago.I a suggest reading The Conservativve Mind
It’s interesting how the Republicans became the Democrats, and vice versa per values from the Civil War forward.
Supressing voter turnout has been a conservative value since the dawn of Democracy.
First, on changing voting rules people are very very leery of change. So dropping something down and saying lets get this through fast – that’s difficult.
Second, a lot of the clerks need a lot of time to implement changes. They shouldn’t, but they do.
It was “the” problem.