For the past seven years, Coloradans for Voting Integrity (CFVI) has chronicled the trend away from public oversight of elections as well as other threats and vulnerabilities found in Colorado’s electoral infrastructure.

Click on the attachment link (below) to download the 17 page CFVI 2011 Legislative Policy Brief as a pdf (300K) or click on the major headings on the left, e.g. Executive Summary under "Legislative- Colorado" to view the document in your browser.

Title: Colorado Election Reform 2011:
A Call for Legislative Action to the Sixty-eighth Colorado General Assembly
December 31, 2010

Recent trends in election management and election equipment have taken both responsibility and access away from citizens and increasingly transferred crucial foundations for democracy to a small number of officials. Consistent pragmatic pressure to lower costs and to increase the convenience of elections has been resisted too rarely and too weakly.

The more complicated our voting methods get, the fewer citizens can be involved. The expectation that experts will take care of our elections for us is increasing year by year.

The Colorado Constitution (Article VII, Section 8) requires “secrecy in voting.” The state cannot offer this protection to voters with mail ballots in their homes. Some voters use the privacy of the precinct polling place for easy escape from intimidation, either overt or imagined.

Although the state funds studies to demonstrate cost savings from reducing options for Colorado voters, political costs go unacknowledged:

1. The elimination of precinct polling places isn’t convenient for anyone other than an election official.

2. Mandatory mail voting discriminates against the 16 to 20 percent of voters who move once a year.