February 27, 2024 09:56 AM UTC

Idiotic and Expensive Republican Elections Bill (Rightfully) Dies in Legislature

• 3 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

The Republican micro-minority caucus in the state legislature is very sad about the failure of yet another bill from Rep. Ken “Skin” DeGraaf (R-Colorado Springs) to overhaul Colorado’s election system.

Instead, they should be thankful that Democrats in the State, Civic, Military, & Veterans Affairs Committee gave it a quick death.

DeGraaf tried a similar version of this legislation in 2023. That bill was also tossed in the “dumb legislation” trash heap, but not before he and his buddy Rep. Scott “There is No” Bottoms (R-Colorado Springs) wasted a lot of time by ranting about various election fraud conspiracies. Among our favorite lines from DeGraaf in February 2023 was this logical nightmare:

What we’re putting our votes into now is a black box. And it’s a black box – we can’t see the code, and we haven’t seen external audits of the code.

Righto!

DeGraaf’s latest “election reform” attempt (HB24-1279) was a bunch of gibberish about “distributed ledgers” and “tally status reports” and something to do with blockchains that would require a significant overhaul of a Colorado election system that is working very well already. DeGraaf’s argument was full of all of the same nonsense election conspiracy theories we’ve heard since 2020, including the “MAGA” Republican obsession with paper ballots and a requirement for a statewide hand count of election results. Nearly 3.3 million Coloradans cast ballots in the last Presidential election in 2020. Just try to imagine setting up a hand count of 3.3 MILLION BALLOTS.

Such a process would be ludicrously time consuming and also very, very expensive. DeGraaf’s “distributed ledger” thing would have led to a $23 million dollar increase in business fees and at least a $20 million expenditure from the General Fund (take a look yourself at the fiscal note for HB24-1279, as prepared by the legislative council’s nonpartisan staff). Colorado businesses would surely be thrilled to cover the expenses for this entirely unnecessary proposal by one of the most unserious members of the state legislature.

DeGraaf’s bill would have also created a massive unfunded mandate for local governments. Again, from the fiscal note:

Statewide hand count. As discussed in the State Expenditure section, counting all elections by hand until the new system is implemented is estimated to increase costs by 50 percent, resulting in an increase in local costs of between $6 million and $10 million annually. Of these new local costs, 45 percent will be reimbursed by DOS. Counties will be responsible for the additional 55 percent.

The Colorado Secretary of State’s office would reimburse counties for 45 percent of the expense of conducting a hand count, but counties would have to eat the majority of the cost. Fiscal conservatism, baby!

 

This is a good point to remind you what Bottoms said about he and DeGraaf during an interview last year with right-wing weirdo Sherronna Bishop:

BISHOP: I can’t wait. Who needs Netflix? We’re going to go watch the Colorado legislative session and watch Rep. Bottoms beat up on Secretary of State Jena Griswold. I can’t wait.

BOTTOMS: Well, I can tell you…Ken and I are really good at this. [Pols emphasis] 

Only the best Republicans.