Colorado Election Integrity
Colorado’s election system is widely recognized as one of the best in the country and serves as a national model. By balancing access and security, our system guarantees that eligible voters can seamlessly cast their ballots while ensuring accurate counts and maintaining security. You can read more about how Colorado’s system works. Track your voter registration and ballot and learn from the experts – Colorado’s county clerks – how they protect our most sacred right as Americans and provide fair and accurate elections.
Colorado’s Election Integrity and the Federal Government
Colorado is home to an election process noted for its ability to preserve access for every eligible voter and protect the integrity of voter registration and Election Day results. Federal legislation being considered currently could impact that and county clerks from across Colorado are weighing in on challenges with proposals making their way through Congress.
Colorado County Clerks Association position on the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act
April 8, 2025
To the Colorado Delegation,
As the people responsible for carrying out state and local elections across Colorado, we are reaching out today to raise your awareness about our concerns with the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, introduced by Rep. Chip Roy of Texas.
In large part, this legislation is an answer to a problem we do not have in Colorado. Before diving into the specific procedural and cost challenges this legislation would create, we want to state clearly that while we agree wholeheartedly with the assertion that only eligible voters should be able to vote in our elections, we also challenge the assertion that this is a widespread problem in our state and in our nation. In Colorado, our election system is widely acknowledged for its ability to preserve both integrity and access.
Specific to the legislation, we have general concerns that this bill will create voter confusion and an increase in voter disenfranchisement, in addition to adding significant and unnecessary procedural complexity and costs for our offices, many of which are already under-resourced in both staff and money. Our specific concerns with this legislation as it was introduced include:
It will make it more difficult and more complex for individuals to prove citizenship and could require them to establish that proof multiple times. This challenge would be compounded for voters who live in rural communities because they would have to travel far distances to their elections office. The legislation’s wording raises specific concerns for seniors, as well as individuals who change their name through marriage or for other reasons. Some studies show as many as nine percent of American citizens do not have the documentation required by this proposal.
It allows election officials, including staff in our office as well as those individuals who volunteer for election service by being an election judge, to be criminally prosecuted and sued civilly if they make an error when assisting in voter registration.
It would add a significant procedural burden for our offices that is not needed to ensure election system integrity. Specifically, rather than allow offices to use existing data for citizenship verification, it requires individuals to bring proof of citizenship into our offices, sometimes repeatedly. For many offices in Colorado, that would require staffing increases. One Denver metro area county office estimates it would need eight additional staff members to accomplish this proposal’s requirements based on actual voter registration numbers from 2020.
All of this legislation’s requirements around proof of citizenship apply only to federal elections. This will likely create significant confusion for voters. And nothing in the proposal provides additional funding for voter education on the new requirements. This burden would fall entirely on our state and counties.
It will greatly increase the cost of our elections as additional training for staff and poll workers will be necessary. More equipment will need to be purchased and poll workers hired – assuming we can find additional poll workers given this legislation’s new criminal and civil penalties – for our voter service and polling centers to counter the longer transaction and wait times that will be a direct result of this legislation. This legislation may also extend the time needed to provide election results on Election Day.
It pushes the expense for voter education, which is always necessary to implement changes outside of the norm for voters, to the state at a time when Colorado is facing budget challenges and to the counties, who have historically under-resourced clerk’s offices.
Many of us serving as county clerks have worked for decades to ensure that Colorado has a voting system that we can all trust. We are always the first to the table to suggest and support process improvements where they will actually improve the process. Unfortunately, this legislation does not accomplish that goal and, in fact, would create the opposite impact.