The Colorado legislature recently passed a bill that would require all county jails and detention facilities to provide in-person polling stations and facilitate mail-in ballots for eligible voters. If signed by Governor Jared Polis, the legislation would make Colorado the only state in the country to require jails to provide in-person voting opportunities. In Denver, which adopted similar reforms for its jails, turnout among individuals in custody actually exceeds turnout of the rest of the voting population.
It would require that sheriffs establish polling stations within local jails across Colorado each general election to operate for at least one six-hour period. It would also require every jail to designate a ballot drop-off location, for those who want to vote by mail.
Colorado would be the first state to enact a mandate of this sort. Nevada, Massachusetts, and Washington state have recently passed initiatives meant to make jail voting easier, but none feature the central requirement of Colorado’s: turning local jails into in-person polling places. . . .
The reform does not affect who is already eligible to vote. Colorado, like nearly every other state, bars people from voting while they are incarcerated if they’ve been convicted of a felony, and SB 72 keeps it that way. Rather, the bill seeks to improve ballot access for a group of people who already have the right to vote but face major barriers to actually using it.
Should Polis sign SB 72 into law, it’ll go into effect in time for this November’s election. (A spokesperson for the governor’s office declined to tell Bolts whether Polis, a Democrat, would sign the bill. Several people who’ve worked closely on it said they expect he will.) This bill would not apply to primary elections; its proponents say they hope to expand it in the future.
The full text of Senate Bill 72 is available here.