With these voters in mind, Colorado lawmakers this spring adopted reforms that will improve access to ballots in Spanish, which should benefit tens of thousands of voters.
Senate Bill 1, a landmark package called the Colorado Voting Rights Act that the Democratic majorities in the state legislature adopted last month, includes requirements that dozens of cities provide multilingual ballots during local elections, bridging a major gap in access for voting in those races.
Some places in Colorado, including Denver, already print ballots in both Spanish and English for every election. But until the passage of SB 1, each city was left to decide whether to provide multilingual ballots—and many places with large numbers of non-native English speakers chose not to do so. Frustrated by this, voting rights advocates pushed for stronger mandates, and are now celebrating their success with SB 1.
Still, the advocates also stress that the bill leaves several gaps in place. They warn that language access will remain weaker for voters who speak a language other than English and Spanish, for instance, and they vow to keep pressing for fixes. “We want others to not go through what we went through,” said Hernandez, who today serves on the steering committee of the Colorado Language Access Coalition….