The Colorado House of Representatives on Monday gave preliminary approval to .
The bill comes after a and imposed a temporary injunction blocking its enforcement.
, sponsored by state Reps. Paul Rosenthal, D-Denver, and Dave Williams, R-Colorado Springs, would repeal the law, which prohibits voters from disclosing their ballot. The first version of the bill also would have explicitly outlawed vote trading, but that provision was later eliminated.
With Monday’s voice vote, the measure moves to a final vote in the House later this week, where if it passes, it would be sent on to the state Senate.
But while it has received bipartisan support so far, passage in the GOP-controlled Senate is far from certain. Secretary of State Wayne Williams, a Republican, has fought in federal court to keep the law in place, and attempts in the past two years have failed to repeal it.
Williams had suggested he would support this year’s bill, but only if it included the provision barring vote trading, a practice that’s a nonissue in most years. But in 2016, it was pushed to the forefront by the , in which voters in states without a competitive presidential election offered to trade votes with a swing-state voter as part of an effort to stop Donald Trump from winning the White House.
An Associated Press review during the 2016 election found that 21 states allow ballot selfies, while it is explicitly illegal in at least 16 others.
The Colorado law targeted for repeal was first passed in 1891, predating the modern notion of a “ballot selfie.” But at the time the law was passed, states around the country were attempting to crack down on fraud in a nation plagued with voter bribery scandals.
Under the law, photographing a completed ballot is a misdemeanor offense.