Rocky Mountain Voice

Tag: Mail Ballots

El Paso Co. found a way to cut undeliverable ballots and clean voter rolls—Colorado leaders looked away
Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

El Paso Co. found a way to cut undeliverable ballots and clean voter rolls—Colorado leaders looked away

By Bob Cooper, COIFFE Director | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice A $50,000 statewide solution was offered—and ignored—while Colorado processed more than 323,000 undeliverable ballots in a single year, costing over a million. This story should get your attention and maybe even make you angry if you care about election integrity issues—or simply about wasting taxpayer dollars in every county in Colorado. Get this: El Paso County has been implementing a common-sense voter roll maintenance process, a true “Gold Standard” process, to reduce election costs and clean up the “dirty,” bloated voter rolls. There is potential for this improved process to save thousands of dollars in election costs every year for every county in Colorado. To help the state implement this, El...
High Court Weighs Limits On Mail Ballots As Election Debate Intensifies
Colorado Politics, Approved, National

High Court Weighs Limits On Mail Ballots As Election Debate Intensifies

By: Mark Sherman | Colorado Politics WASHINGTON • The Supreme Court ‘s conservative majority on Monday sounded skeptical of state laws that allow the counting of late-arriving mail ballots. The court heard arguments in a case from Mississippi that also could affect voters in 13 other states and the District of Columbia, which have grace periods for ballots cast by mail. An additional 15 states that have more forgiving deadlines for ballots from military and overseas voters also could be impacted. Colorado already requires mail ballots to be received at county clerks’ offices by the time polling locations close on Election Day, although Colorado and the majority of states allow certain military and overseas ballots to be acce...
Debunking the “Californians Turned Colorado Blue” Myth: Organic Change or Engineered Illusion?
X Articles, Approved, Commentary, State

Debunking the “Californians Turned Colorado Blue” Myth: Organic Change or Engineered Illusion?

By Mark Cook | Commentary, Article on X The claim that an influx of liberal Californians (or even broader interstate migration) single-handedly flipped Colorado from a Republican-leaning swing state to a reliably Democratic one collapses under even modest scrutiny of the numbers. Between 2000 and 2024, Colorado absorbed roughly 2.8 million gross domestic in-migrants, with Californians making up about 25% (≈685,000). This represents only 25–30% of the state’s total population growth and less than one-third of the 3.25 million net new registered voters the Colorado Secretary of State’s office claims were added in the same period. Voter-file models consistently show domestic migrants breaking roughly 32% Republican, 28% Democratic, and 40% Unaffiliated/Independent, a mix that i...
Gold standard or clear failure? Colorado trails 36 nations on election rules.
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Gold standard or clear failure? Colorado trails 36 nations on election rules.

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Colorado’s election rulebook emphasizes convenience—automatic mail ballots, long voting windows and ballot harvesting—exactly where most countries draw hard lines. That philosophical split is why Colorado lands at 50 out of 100 in a new international survey, and why the authors behind it want an on-the-record conversation with the secretary of state. “We’d love to speak with your secretary of state… we’ll ask questions and she can ask questions,” said Gary Meyers, who co-authored the study with Jay DeLancy. Meyers explained that The Meyers Report is a long-running research group, active for more than forty years, with contributors spread across 30 countries. “We’re interested in truth, we’re interested in fairness,” he said, describing a team...
Are there too many Grumpy Old Men Voters in Colorado?
Rocky Mountain Voice, Approved, Commentary, State, Top Stories

Are there too many Grumpy Old Men Voters in Colorado?

By Mike O’Donnell | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Every ten years the U.S. Census Bureau organizes a count of all the residents of the United States. This count includes citizens as well as non-citizens, and even those experiencing homelessness. The Census Bureau also provides annual updates to the decennial numbers using surveys as well as by tapping into government information they can easily access like data on births and deaths, federal tax returns, medicare enrollments, and statistics from the Social Security Administration. These annual updates serve many purposes and, in my case, one of them is to provide feedback on how accurate the Colorado voter roll is. Colorado switched to mail-in ballots in 2013 and is one of only eight states that conducts mail-in electio...