Concluding its rapid fall, a plan to hold a primarily paper-ballot election this year in Colorado met its formal end this morning.
The state Senate Appropriations Committee killed the bill outlining the plan by a vote of 8-1 after less than 15 minutes of discussion. Sen. John Morse, a Colorado Springs Democrat who as the committee chair cast the final vote in the roll call, was the only vote for the bill.
Sitting in the audience, three county clerks smiled and softly clapped their hands together.
“We’re just pleased,” said Rio Blanco County Clerk Nancy Amick, the president of the Colorado County Clerks Association who lobbied heavily against the bill. “We can go to work. We can get down to business. We’re delighted.”
Voting activists, who have pushed for paper ballots and have threatened a lawsuit if counties go ahead with widespread use of their voting machines, lamented the bill’s death.
“Today is the darkest day yet for voters and elections in Colorado,” Harvie Branscomb, with the Colorado Voter Group, wrote in an e-mail. “Not only has the legislature refused to respond to the urgent calls for reform from citizens who have abandoned their careers to sound the alarm, but they are systematically failing to hear the evidence for the concern.”
Late last year, Secretary of State Mike Coffman decertified many of the voting machines used in Colorado for not meeting security or accuracy standards. That prompted lawmakers to scramble to find a way to hold elections this year. In January, Gov. Bill Ritter and the majority and minority leaders in both chambers announced a plan for a primarily paper-ballot election, calling paper ballots “tried and true.”
Coffman, working with county clerks and operating under guidelines laid out in another bill passed this year, has now recertified all the voting machines.
Rumblings that the paper-ballot plan was in trouble began this week, and yesterday all but Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon, the Denver Democrat who was the bill’s primary author, withdrew support. Ritter said the money that had been earmarked for the bill was going to be used for something else.
Gordon didn’t attend this morning’s hearing.
“He doesn’t even want to witness this spectacle,” Morse said.
Later, on the Senate floor, Gordon appeared crestfallen.
“I thought there were good reasons to move to paper ballots,” he said.
