Voting this year in Colorado comes with all the fun of paying a bill. Some will send their ballots in right away, while others leave them on the kitchen counter right up until Election Day. And there are even bill collectors of sorts — or hostage-takers, depending on how you see political campaigns — who will nag voters with doorstep visits and phone calls until they mail in their ballots.
Universal mail-in balloting is getting its first tryout in a major election. Each county sent ballots to every registered voter last week, giving them until Nov. 4 to return them.
Along with same-day voter registration, also ushered in by Democrat-backed electoral reforms last year, the new laws offer candidates in tight, high-profile contests the chance to boost turnout.
Critics of the new laws worry that, by making voting so easy, they increase the risk for voter fraud.
But no matter whom you ask, there’s little disagreement that Colorado’s increased access to voting could be a wild card in this year’s election.
“It’s sort of a one-two punch when it comes to the mail-in process and our expansive get-out-the-vote program,” said Kristin Lynch, Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Udall’s campaign spokeswoman.
That opportunity could prove key in three huge races that have attracted national attention: Udall vs. Republican challenger Rep. Cory Gardner, Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper vs. Republican challenger Bob Beauprez and Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman vs. Democratic challenger Andrew Romanoff.
Colorado campaigns for years have adapted to the increasing use of early mail voting by expanding their outreach programs from only the final days before an election into several weeks. Before the 2012 election, 71 percent of active voters had opted to receive mail ballots.
The system is so sophisticated that campaigns download county voting reports each day and cross voters off their lists, knowing they’ve cast ballots — although not how they voted.
Outside groups on both sides also are firing up programs to get voters to mail in their ballots.
Some worry that the single-day focus of Election Day, which elevates the importance of voting, has been lost.
But there’s an upside for voters in that they have greatly expanded access, and flexibility, to cast their votes.
Effect on turnout
Colorado voters have had the option, in some form, of voting by mail instead of standing in line on Election Day since 1992. But under the law adopted last year, voting by mail is now the standard, with additional options of dropping a ballot into a secure box or voting in person at county voter service centers. Those open across the state Monday.
Colorado joins only Oregon and Washington state in adopting nearly universal voting by mail.
In the 2013 election, the first test of the new law, just 1 percent of voters — 18,094 — chose to vote in person rather than by mail in an election that featured mostly local races and statewide ballot measures on marijuana taxes and school funding.
Studies are mixed on the impact mail voting has on turnout, throwing some cold water on partisans’ hopes. But a 2013 study by Yale University researchers of Washington’s adoption of vote-by-mail estimated that the change there increased participation in elections by 2 percentage points to 4 percentage points.
“What seems to be the case is that it makes it easier to vote for people who were already going to vote anyway” rather than for sporadic voters, said Seth Masket, chairman of the University of Denver’s Department of Political Science.
He noted that voters have to scrounge up postage, an extra hassle. It’s 70 cents in Denver (two stamps) but varies by county based on the ballot’s weight.
But if campaigns succeed in increasing turnout by keeping the pressure on voters, Masket said, Democrats are most likely to benefit. That’s because their base voters tend to vote in lower numbers in midterm elections.
Campaigns on both sides of the aisle have oriented their efforts around tracking ballot returns, enabling them to shift their outreach to potential voters who haven’t followed through. Some fired up their programs earlier than usual because of the all-mail system.
Each side has set up extensive networks of volunteers and offices to aid candidates at all levels, although Republicans — who were outgamed by Democrats in 2010 and 2012 — are more coy about revealing numbers.
Colorado Republican Chairman Ryan Call says the GOP has staffed 14 field offices with phone banks, coordinators and armies of volunteers. The Republican National Committee helped with the cost, and he said the first outpost opened in September 2013 in Coffman’s 6th Congressional District in Aurora.
“We’ll let our results on Election Day show that the effort has been well-executed,” Call said.
Meanwhile, Romanoff is among Democratic congressional candidates who have combined efforts with Udall’s campaign.
As Udall set out Thursday on a “Mark Your Ballot” bus tour criss-crossing the state over two weeks, Lynch detailed the extent of the Democrats’ operation: 25 field offices, more than 100 organizers and 4,000 active volunteers, including nearly 1,000 in the 6th District.
Udall’s campaign claims its “ground game” is triple the size of the one that Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet relied upon in part to win 2010’s close election.
“The new voter laws mean we can do more” to ensure voters vote, said Denise Baron, Romanoff’s spokeswoman.
But Coffman’s and Gardner’s campaigns are just as intent on rallying their supporters to get their ballots in.
Concerns of voter fraud
Call and some other Republicans still have reservations about the new law enabling the voting changes, although the most heat focuses on the same-day voter registration provision. It allows citizens to register and vote if they have lived in the jurisdiction for at least 22 days.
The legislature already revisited the law this year and nixed a provision that allowed same-day registration as long as the voter merely intended to live in the area — after a voting stunt last year by activist Jon Caldara.
The argument over Colorado’s law breaks down, largely along partisan lines, between whether it increases voter access or loosens the system so much it risks voter fraud.
House Bill 1303 originally made it through both chambers of the statehouse to Hickenlooper’s desk without a single Republican vote. Its passage came at a time many states with Republican-run legislatures have restricted voting access by enacting new ID requirements and other rules.
Secretary of State Scott Gessler, the state’s chief election official and a Republican, said this week that nothing since the law’s passage has allayed his concerns.
To be punished for voter fraud, “You have to have someone detecting it and reporting it, and you have to have someone willing to prosecute it,” Gessler said. “That hasn’t been the case,” he said about local election officials and prosecutors.
Still, cases of reported fraud before and after the new law have remained rare.
Gessler’s office has flagged dozens of suspicious registrations or ballots, but none saw the inside of courtroom. In many cases, the registration turned out to be legitimate, and in others, prosecutions were never pursued. Sometimes, Gessler said, voters claimed they simply made a mistake.
The Colorado County Clerks Association, which includes mostly Republicans, asked for last year’s changes to simplify the system, encourage voter turnout and eventually cut their Election Day costs, including by sharply reducing the need for provisional ballots.
After the law took effect last year, more than 7,000 people registered and were allowed to vote between Oct. 6 and the Nov. 5 election, according to the secretary of state’s office.
Those included 708 voters who registered on Election Day and cast a ballot. The state has 3.6 million registered voters.
“Fraud is something to take very seriously,” said Sheila Reiner, president of the Colorado County Clerks Association, a Republican and the clerk and recorder for Mesa County.
“But it’s extremely rare.”
Elena Nunez, executive director of the voting rights and public integrity organization Colorado Common Cause, said election offices have a reliable system to verify that signatures match the original voter registration, and any that are questionable are pulled out and verified.
Separately, since the 2013 law’s passage, Gessler said his office put forth “a Herculean effort” to develop an electronic pollbook that allows every election office in the state to instantly find out if someone has already cast a vote in another precinct anywhere in the state.
Jon Murray: 303-954-1405 or jmurray@denverpost.com
Should you trust a stranger with your ballot?
Colorado voting rights activist Marlyn Marks wrote an op-ed article for The Denver Post warning voters not to hand over their ballots to strangers who could then alter or discard them.
County clerks have dispelled that concern this week, noting that collecting ballots was legal in Colorado long before last year’s change in the law.
Pueblo County Clerk Gilbert “Bo” Ortiz said this week that the law allows one person to collect no more than 10 ballots.
“This is legal and acceptable,” he said. “The law is designed to allow family members, neighbors, friends, nonprofits or even campaigns to turn in sealed, secret ballots for people who might not get their ballots counted otherwise.
“Obviously, you should only give your ballot to someone you trust, but even people who wait until the last minute still have the right to vote, and sometimes that requires a little help. Without this law, I couldn’t turn in my grandmother’s ballot and spouses couldn’t drop off ballots for each other.”
–Joey Bunch
