DENVER — Powerful Democrats are working to take power away from voters.
A ballot issue expected to qualify for the November election would ask voters to overhaul how elections in the state are run. It is pushed by former DaVita CEO Kent Thiry.
His group, Colorado Voters First, is collecting signatures to qualify the ballot issue for November that would change Colorado elections to ranked choice voting and open primaries to have the top four candidates advance regardless of party affiliation.
Democrats plan to delay it from happening, even if Coloradans approve the plan.
“We know these things take a lot of voter education, so I said we need to test this out. And that’s what the amendment does. It doesn’t stop the ballot measure from going into effect, it merely slows it down,” State Rep. Emily Sirota, D-Denver, said.
On a Sunday afternoon, in about one minute, Sirota got an amendment passed into an annual election modification bill. That amendment would delay ranked choice voting, even if voters say yes to the potential ballot issue in November. The Colorado Sun first reported the impact of the amendment.
The ballot issue would call for ranked choice voting to start in 2026.
Ranked choice voting is when voters pick multiple candidates and rank them in order of preference.
The least popular candidate is eliminated, and all ballots that had that candidate first get their second choice counted. This continues until someone gets 50%.
“I’m a state lawmaker, and my job is to look out for public policy made in the state of Colorado, and in this case, to ensure that Colorado’s elections can be conducted in the best way possible," Sirota said.
“First, it’s important to let voters speak and let voters decide if this is a policy they want to enact,” Amber McReynolds said.
McReynolds is the former Denver elections director and is supportive of the ballot issue on ranked choice voting.
“It seems to me that you would allow the voters to decide what they think about this and then, if it passes, sure, there might need to be legislation and enacting legislation that clarifies or further implements the measure,” McReynolds said.
Lawmakers making statutory changes ahead of potential ballot issues is not new.
In 2021, state lawmakers made property taxes more confusing, by changing “residential” and “non-residential” and adding several more subclasses.
The purpose was to undercut a ballot issue seeking to cut property taxes for all. The impact of a "yes" vote on that ballot issue would have meant much less funding for school districts, cities, counties and all the districts that rely on property tax money.
By adding subclasses to property tax definitions, lawmakers prevented that ballot issue from taking effect for most property owners.
The ballot issue ultimately failed.
The elections bill that got amended to include the ranked choice voting delay, makes several technical changes to current elections law, but it also adds protection for clerks.
The Colorado County Clerks Association is concerned that county commissioners in Park and Custer Counties might try to remove the county clerk as the chief elections officer because they are not proponents of election denialism.
The bill would clarify that county commissioners cannot remove an elected clerk as the chief election officer.
The Colorado County Clerks Association has called for Gov. Jared Polis (D) to sign the bill, while Colorado Voters First want him to veto it because of the ranked choice voting delay mechanism.
Polis has until June 7 to veto any bill. He can sign bills until then or let them take effect without his signature.
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