Coloradans in jail promised better voter access under bill approved by state Senate

The Colorado Senate passed a bill that would require county sheriffs to better work with county clerks to ensure eligible voters who are confined in jails can cast ballots.

Senate Bill 24-72 would require county sheriffs to designate someone who would be responsible for informing confined individuals of their eligibility to vote and coordinating with the county clerk to set up a temporary, in-person voting center at their local county jail.

“This bill, colleagues, is about ensuring that we build upon the ability for eligible Coloradans to vote,” state Sen. Julie Gonzales, a Denver Democrat who sponsored the bill, said on the Senate floor Thursday. “Sixty percent of the jail population currently in the state of Colorado are pretrial detainees. In this country, you are innocent until proven guilty, and so if you are detained in jail before you have been convicted of any offense — or if you’ve been convicted of a misdemeanor — you should still have access to the ballot.”

Gonzales said she worked with a number of county clerks and sheriffs in developing the bill. She said that in the 2020 and 2022 general elections combined, over 9,000 eligible confined voters did not receive a ballot.



https://coloradonewsline.com/briefs/colorado-ballots-jail-voters/