Center for Public Integrity: Colorado makes it easier to vote while guarding against conspiracy theorists

Center for Public Integrity: Colorado makes it easier to vote while guarding against conspiracy theorists

“I don’t think we’re immune to these attempts to degrade our really great system and to make voting more difficult,” said Cameron Hill, associate director of Common Cause Colorado. ... Hill said a goal of Colorado Common Cause, criminal justice reform organizations and other voting rights groups in the next year or two is legislative action or a ballot initiative to fully restore the voting rights of people serving prison sentences for felonies. If successful, Colorado would join only Maine, Vermont and Washington, D.C., in allowing any resident citizen over age 18 to vote regardless of criminal convictions or incarceration. “It’s possible. There’s an appetite,” Hill said. “We have some pretty progressive lawmakers and we’re on track to get several more.” 

Colorado has continued to improve access to voting in the past two years, but advocates are urging an end to the state’s disenfranchisement of people who’ve been convicted of felonies.  …

In the last two years, Republicans in Colorado’s legislature proposed bills that ran the gamut of restricting voting access, from more aggressive voter roll purges to requiring strict voter ID at the polls, to abolishing the state’s vote-by-mail system, which had bipartisan support in 2013. All were rejected by the legislature’s Democratic majority in committees with occasional agreement from a small number of Republicans.

“I don’t think we’re immune to these attempts to degrade our really great system and to make voting more difficult,” said Cameron Hill, associate director of Common Cause Colorado. …

Hill said a goal of Colorado Common Cause, criminal justice reform organizations and other voting rights groups in the next year or two is legislative action or a ballot initiative to fully restore the voting rights of people serving prison sentences for felonies. If successful, Colorado would join only Maine, Vermont and Washington, D.C., in allowing any resident citizen over age 18 to vote regardless of criminal convictions or incarceration.

“It’s possible. There’s an appetite,” Hill said. “We have some pretty progressive lawmakers and we’re on track to get several more.”