Colorado isn’t ready for major changes to our election system, even if adopting an all-party primary and ranked-choice general election could mean more and perhaps better choices for voters in future years.
Tina Peters’ saga of dragging Colorado’s election system through the mud just came to an end this month when she was sentenced to nine years in jail and prison. And despite humiliating smack-downs in the legal system of other notorious election conspiracy theorists — Jenna Ellis, John Eastman and more — they and others continue to cast doubt on our election systems.
We know that Colorado’s elections are the “gold standard.”
However, enough Colorado voters still question the integrity of our elections that we think implementing a drastic change now could be disastrous.
Proposition 131 would change how the state elects candidates for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives and statewide offices for governor, secretary of state, attorney general, treasurer, state Board of Education and University of Colorado regents. Additionally, it would change how candidates are elected to the Colorado General Assembly — House and Senate. It would not change county, municipal or special district elections.
The first change would be to eliminate primaries — for both the Republican and Democratic parties — and instead create a single primary ballot for candidates from all parties including unaffiliated candidates.
The top four candidates would then advance to the general election ballot, where voters would be asked to “rank some or all of the candidates for each office in order of preference.” Here’s where ranked-choice voting comes in — if someone’s first choice proves to be unpopular, their vote goes to their second choice, then third choice, until a single candidate gets more than 50% of the vote.
This system requires faith in the election administrator not to monkey around with the totals. The complicated reallocation of votes is done by computer, sometimes in real time, meaning a candidate might be “out” with the first batch of ballots but “back in” with the second batch. We were reassured that hand counts of Colorado’s secure paper ballot system — as required by law in close elections or if a candidate is willing to pay for it — would still be possible. The recounts would be expensive and time-consuming.
Implementing this on a statewide basis will take money and time, including creating a way to perform a risk-limiting audit with independent software to make certain that the original tally is correct.
While the actual ranking process is fairly straightforward, Colorado voters will have to pay close attention to make sure they don’t accidentally spoil their ballot by ranking two first-choice candidates or other easy mistakes. Also, having city and county elections that are not part of the open primary adds to the confusion, especially for unaffiliated voters who will still get both the Republican and Democrat primary ballots but can only participate in one.
Someone like Tina Peters would have a field day casting doubt on election results from this system. Across the nation, we’ve seen that hand counts closely matching machine counts don’t dissuade conspiracy theorists, even when coupled with detailed lists of voters who participated in the election.
For Colorado to transition to such a system will take time and trust. We’d need something closer to a super-majority vote than a mere 50% win this November to convince us Coloradans are ready to fight this election battle.
There is one guaranteed clear advantage of Proposition 131 — a candidate would have to get at least 50% of the vote to win. No longer would third-party candidates serve as only spoilers, but voters would feel liberated to cast a ballot for someone unaffiliated or libertarian without throwing away their vote.
Kent Thiry, the former CEO of DaVita, is financially backing the effort to bring ranked choice voting to Colorado. He says the goal is to create an election system that does three things: 1. Levels the playing field in the primary for all candidates regardless of party, giving Colorado’s huge segment of unaffiliated voters a voice in the nominee selection process. 2. Because most voters don’t participate in the primary, give voters a choice in the general election by having four candidates advance. 3. Require that any candidate get majority support to win.
“The problem right now … there can be no debating that voters lack choice. That they get to cast very few meaningful votes in a general election and that spoilers play a big role,” Thiry said.
These are goals worth of pursuing and voting “no” on Proposition 131 doesn’t mean Colorado won’t eventually tackle the complex process of improving elections.
And Thiry has already helped improve Colorado’s system by opening up primaries to unaffiliated voters. Rather than spending millions of dollars to upend the system completely, the state could work on getting voters engaged with the existing system. If turnout was the same for caucuses and primaries as it was for the general election, Colorado would have more choices and candidates more aligned with the average voter.
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