May 25, 2016
Disability Law Colorado's Vote! Program is advising all voters who want to participate in the June 28th primary election to check their voter registration status and to be aware of the following deadlines:
Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams issued a news release on May 24th containing the following information:
Republican and Democratic voters will be nominating candidates for the U.S. Senate, U.S. House, state Senate, state House, University of Colorado Board of Regents, state Board of Education, district attorney and county commissions. You can find more detailed information about the candidates on the Secretary of State's website at www.sos.state.co.us
Because only the Democratic and Republican parties are participating in the 2016 primary election, only voters who timely affiliate with those parties are eligible to vote. Colorado election law establishes different deadlines to affiliate as a Democrat or Republican, depending on whether a voter is affiliated with any political party or is unaffiliated.
Unaffiliated voters may affiliate with the Democratic or Republican parties any time through Election Day on June 28. However, unaffiliated voters who want to participate and receive their ballots by mail must affiliate with the appropriate party by June 20th. Unaffiliated voters who affiliate with either party after June 20th cannot be mailed a ballot and must visit a voter service center in their county to vote in person. The dates those centers will open and their locations are available by checking with your county clerk.
In addition, registered voters who already are affiliated with a political party and want to switch party affiliation to either the Democratic or Republican party have a May 31 deadline in order to vote in the primary.
Williams advises voters to check their registration at GoVoteColorado.com. They should make sure their addresses are current as ballots are not forwarded by the U.S. Postal Service.
Voters also should ensure their party affiliation is correct. The Secretary of State’s office discovered in March that on certain cell phones the mobile optimized version for online voting registration did not show the “next” and “submit” buttons on the last two pages of a voter change. Voters might not have realized that they failed to complete their transaction.
Because of that, the Secretary of State’s office has notified 1,949 affiliated voters who used the app between Nov. 7, 2015 and March 4, 2016 that an error was detected and to check their registrations. The office has not sent similar notices to unaffiliated voters because county clerks recently mailed them notices about the June 20 deadline.
The Secretary of State’s office has since turned off the mobile optimized version of online voter registration. The web version is still available for both personal computers and mobile devices, including a tablet and a phone.
If there are people with disabilities experiencing barriers to registration or in the election process, please contact Jennifer Levin, Vote! Program Coordinator at jlevin@dev.disabilitylawco.org or (303) 722-0300.
