The New York Times-20080124-All-Mail Vote In Colorado Isn-t Needed- Governor Says
Return to: The_New_York_Times-20080124
All-Mail Vote In Colorado Isn't Needed, Governor Says
Coloradans will not be required to vote by mail in November, Gov. Bill Ritter Jr. said Wednesday in announcing a one-year emergency repair plan for the state's voting system.
Mr. Ritter, a Democrat, said a bill with bipartisan sponsors would be introduced in the next few days in the Democrat-controlled General Assembly that would allow voters to cast paper ballots at regular polling places.
The mechanics of Colorado's election were thrown into disarray last month when the secretary of state, Mike Coffman, a Republican, decertified many of the electronic machines used to vote or to count votes because of problems with accuracy or security.
A majority of the state's county clerks -- the field marshals of the voting system -- supported a statewide all-mail-in election as the best stop-gap option, which would have made Colorado the second state in the nation, after Oregon, to use all-mail voting. And some leaders in the legislature had seemed inclined to go along with the idea as well.
But Mr. Ritter, speaking at a news conference at the Capitol, said the problems and risks of introducing a mandatory all-mail system by November were too daunting. And some county clerks, he added, also opposed the idea.
Paper ballots are a tried-and-true method that has worked for decades, Mr. Ritter said. As for an all-mail system, he added, we'd be building an airplane in the air.
Mr. Ritter said in a letter to the county clerks that other pieces of legislation already in the General Assembly's pipeline would get electronic voting machines recertified for the limited purpose of providing access to disabled voters, and get ballot-scanning devices back up and running in time to count the paper ballots on election night.
About 30 percent of the statewide vote in the last few elections came in by mail -- an option for Colorado voters since 1992. Residents will still be able to vote by mail in November under the new bill, its sponsors said, and they will be encouraged to do so to take pressure off polling places where paper voting might slow down the process.
Though the governor mentioned no counties by name, one of the most vocal opponents of all-mail voting was Denver County, which has the biggest block of registered Democrats in the state. The Denver city clerk, Stephanie Y. O'Malley, said at a public hearing this month that many Denver residents would not vote by mail-in ballot. Some small rural counties that have never done much mail-in balloting had also expressed reservations.
