Ranked Choice? The Colorado Legislature’s Last Choice
October 24, 2024
By: Dana Smith
On June 6th, 2024, Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed Senate Bill 210 into effect. SB-210 is an election modifier bill, making technical changes to election procedures that are thought to be crucial by legislators before the 2024 election. These include decreasing the preregistration age from 16 to 15, requiring officials to update financial disclosures, protecting election clerks from election fraud theories, and other largely uncontested modifications. However, a last-minute amendment to SB-210 has sparked controversy and has the potential to silence voters’ voices in November.
The amendment, proposed by Democrat Representative Emily Sirota from Denver, adds stipulations to the implementation of ranked choice voting at the state level. The amendment requires that before a ranked choice system can be used statewide, at least 12 municipalities of specified size and demographic makeups must have ranked choice systems in place. These municipalities must engage in risk-limiting audits certifying that election results are accurate. The secretary must also submit a report to be brought to the general assembly regarding the impact and efficiency of this method within these municipalities. This 11th hour amendment was introduced and passed within a minute, with no legislators engaging in debate.
The amendment comes just in time for Proposition 131 to hit Coloradans’ ballots on November 5th. Proposition 131 will ask voters if they support the establishment of top four primary elections and ranked choice voting for U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, governor, attorney general, secretary of state, treasurer, and other various state offices. Currently, Colorado primaries are semi-closed, meaning that members registered to a given party cannot vote in the opposing party’s primary. A top four primary system involves all candidates, regardless of party affiliation, appearing on one ballot in the primary. Voters will determine their top four choices and the candidates with the highest top four votes will move forward to the general election where ranked choice voting will be used to determine the winner.
Fair Vote, an organization leading the support for Proposition 131, claims that the measure will strengthen voters’ voices and increase equality in access to elections regardless of political affiliation. They also claim that these efforts can help to increase very low voter turnout rates in Colorado’s primaries and potentially stop polarization in Colorado’s state legislature, which has been consistently ranked the most polarized in the country.
At the same time, the Proposition faces staunch opposition from major political parties in Colorado, as well as from organizations like First Choice Counts. The organization voices concerns over election fairness under a ranked-choice system and highlights how the state is unprepared to implement it, which is the reason given for the addition of the SB-210 amendment.
The question now is, what happens if Proposition 131 passes in Colorado in November? Does the state legislature have the power to inhibit the direct demands of the people? If successful, the Proposition was originally supposed to go into effect by 2026, but that was before the SB-210 amendment. With the amendment in place, it is possible that the requirements may never be fulfilled, and the voices of the people may go unanswered. There are potential avenues for Proposition 131 to go into effect, but it is unlikely Coloradans will see any change to their voting system before 2028 at the earliest.
Colorado is one of the few states with a veto referendum, allowing the people to potentially strike down SB-210 and abolish the prerequisites for statewide implementation of ranked-choice voting. However, gaining support for this initiative would likely be time consuming and costly, and the veto referendum would eliminate the parts of SB-210 that are widely supported.
Supporters of Proposition 131 have signaled that they will fight the amendment in the courts if the Proposition is successful at the ballot box. Governor Polis gave weight to this strategy when in a statement after signing he said that the amendment violates the Colorado state constitution. Courts could potentially strike down the amendment and leave the door open for implementation of rank-choice voting without prerequisites.
However, this may not be necessary even if Proposition 131 passes. The Governor has emphasized his commitment to fulfilling the will of the voters, promising to issue an executive order to facilitate the implementation of Proposition 131 under the requirements of SB-210 by 2028. Other legislators have echoed similar sentiments but have not committed to the Governor’s short timeline. On November 5th, the future of ranked choice voting will be in the hands of the people, despite this, courts and legislators will be the ones deciding if their voices really matter.