New Colorado election laws expand multilingual voting access, voter registration options

In the same week the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Arizona laws banning third-party ballot collection and the counting of ballots cast in the wrong precinct, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, signed a very different bill into law.

House Bill 21-1011 is supposed to make voting easier for people whose primary language is not English. The bill requires the secretary of state’s office, as well as county clerk and recorders from certain Colorado counties, to establish a multilingual voting hotline. The hotline must provide voters with access to ballot information in every language other than English used by at least 2,000 citizens 18 and older, or 2.5% of the voting-eligible population, who can’t speak English very well.

Similarly, state and local elections must feature sample ballots in any language that qualifies, with translated ballots for in-person voting available upon request. The bill’s requirements go into effect starting with the November 2022 election.

The new law represents just one way in which Colorado, like other Democratic-majority states, is moving in the opposite direction of Republican-led states that are making it harder for people to vote. The rift between voting practices in red and blue states seems sure to grow, thanks to the Supreme Court decision regarding Arizona. That decision, experts say, will make it much harder to prove that restrictions on voting violate federal law.

Read more: https://coloradonewsline.com/2021/07/06/new-colorado-election-laws-expand-multilingual-voting-access-voter-registration-options/