The $11 million promised to fund a primarily paper ballot election this year in Colorado has fallen through, putting the plan in serious jeopardy when it comes up for a vote tomorrow.
Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon, the Denver Democrat who is sponsoring the bill, said today that the $11 million that had been pledged for the bill is no longer available.
“I think people are planning on spending it on something else,” he said.
Without the money, the bill faces a tough fight to make it through the Senate appropriations committee tomorrow morning.
Gov. Bill Ritter, who also championed the paper ballot plan, is expected to take questions on it later this afternoon.
The news of a possible collapse comes at the end of a series of private discussions Gordon had in the last few days in an effort to secure broader support for the bill. Gordon approached several Republican senators asking whether they would support the bill if it contained an option for counties to conduct an all-mail-ballot election.
“My sense was he was offering another option because perhaps he didn’t have the votes to get the bill out of the appropriations committee,” said Sen. Nancy Spence, a Centennial Republican who was one of the senators Gordon spoke with.
Sen. Mike Kopp, a Littleton Republican who also spoke with Gordon, agreed.
“My sense is that he would be doing that because his bill is in trouble,” Kopp said yesterday.
Gordon declined to comment today on the bill’s fate, saying only, “The bill is up tomorrow, and I’m going to ask people to vote for it.”
Several county clerks, many of whom have been opposed to the bill, said they have not heard whether the bill is in danger but said they are hoping for a resolution soon.
“We’re really and truthfully waiting for this to be resolved so we can move forward,” said Rio Blanco County Clerk Nancy Amick, the president of the Colorado County Clerks Association. “We have an election to run and we’re running out of time.”
Yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Andy McElhany, R-Colorado Springs, who is co-sponsoring the bill along with Gordon and party leaders in the House, said the bill, “may be high-centered right now.” But McElhany said then he believed the bill could be saved.
The bill came about after Secretary of State Mike Coffman late last year decertified many of the voting machines used in Colorado. Coffman has since recertified those machines, and every county in the state is capable of conducting an election under existing law.
But Ritter, Gordon and others said the decertifications had damaged public trust in the machines, prompting their plan to use paper ballots, which they called “tried and true.” A concern of a lawsuit from voting activists – whose successful 2006 suit spurred the decertifications – also drove the paper ballot plan.
