Colorado election results may violate 1946 Secret Ballots Amendment

By Mike O’Donnell | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

The Colorado Constitution guarantees the right for citizens to vote in secret. 

Article VII, Section 8 states that all elections by the people shall be by ballot, and no ballots shall be marked in any way that would allow the ballot to be identified as the ballot of a particular person. And in 1946, Colorado voters approved the Secret Ballots Amendment that explicitly provided for secret ballots. 

However, if a voter voluntarily shares how he or she voted, they may do so. Colorado Revised Statute §1-13-712 says that any voter who makes available an image of the voter’s own ballot through electronic means, after it is prepared for voting, is deemed to have consented to the transmittal of that image. So if someone who is addicted to social media takes a ballot “selfie” and posts that somewhere, they are allowed to do so (despite it being an incredibly silly thing to do). 

But irrespective, unless self-disclosed, Colorado citizens enjoy a fundamental right to vote in secret, and this right is further protected by statutes and regulations that govern the state’s election process.

Sadly, the current Colorado Secretary of State doesn’t appear to be familiar with this fundamental right. Or perhaps she disagrees with it, as she does with so many other laws, and simply ignores it?

In Colorado, every voter is assigned to an election precinct, which is simply a geographic area within a county designated for voting purposes. A ten-digit precinct number is assigned to every registered voter and this indicates the registrant’s Congressional district (first digit), their state Senate district (next two digits), House district (next two digits), county (next two digits) and the precinct code (final three digits).

A voter’s primary residence address determines their electoral precinct irrespective of the address where a ballot is mailed. If a Colorado citizen is homeless or has no fixed permanent address, they may use an address (known as a “home base”) that they regularly return to as their address for voter registration purposes, and thus that voter’s precinct number.

The electoral map of Colorado is currently divided up into 3,186 individual precincts spread over the state’s 64 counties. The average precinct contains 1,287 active registered voters (as of Aug. 1, 2025) although the number of active registered voters per precinct ranges widely, from 2 to 3,813.

There are 27 precincts across 11 different counties containing fewer than 20 active registered voters.

And this is where the Colorado Secretary of State falls afoul of Colorado law, either because of ignorance or the result of outright negligence.

The Secretary of State’s website publishes election results for each and every individual precinct where ten or more Coloradans voted. This threshold isn’t low enough because for this specific precinct example (I’ve redacted identifiable data to protect the innocent) where only fourteen out of seventeen registered Coloradans voted in the November 2024 election, only two of those voters were registered Democrats according to the publicly available version of the Colorado voter roll.

Example precinct results page with identifying details redacted. Totals shown per contest are from the Colorado Secretary of State election results portal. Screenshot captured Aug. 1, 2025.

Only 25.3% of active adult voters in Colorado are registered Democrats. So because they went out of their way to affiliate with the party, you can assume they are true party faithful. 

Nonetheless, it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to work out that if there are only two registered Democrats in this precinct, they are likely the ones that voted for the Democrat candidates for Congress and the Democrat candidates for the State Board of Education. The fact that they didn’t seem interested in voting for their party’s state Senate candidate is telling. And the fact that they appear to have voted against their party’s choice for president and the state House, is very revealing.

Is it a violation of Colorado’s Constitution and the Secret Ballots Amendment of 1946 that I can see this? 

That’s how it looks to me. I shouldn’t be able to see how ANYONE voted in Colorado by looking at information freely provided by a less than competent Secretary of State.

Allowing the Democrat party’s Antifa thugs access to this sort of information could endanger the personal security of the two voters in this precinct who seem (horror of horrors!) to have crossed party lines to vote for two opposition candidates.

If I were this couple, I would be launching a multimillion dollar lawsuit against the Colorado Secretary of State.

If I were the State Attorney General, I probably wouldn’t care (because it doesn’t involve finding fault with the current president).

If I were with the Department of Justice, I may be very interested in digging deeper into this. 

Sharing voting machine system access passwords with the public last year was one thing. 

Violating the fundamental right of Colorado citizens to vote in secret is another. And in my view, that is most clearly a serious criminal offense. 

Mike O’Donnell is a small business advocate, nonprofit executive and economic development leader based in Kirk, Colorado. He currently serves as Executive Director of Prairie Rose Development Corp., a mission-driven lender supporting underserved entrepreneurs across the state.

Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.