#voting access

"Colorado is poised to be the first state to to expand automatic voter registration to Native American reservations, thanks to a new registration system.

Tribal members have the right to vote in elections, from the local to the national level, just like other U.S. citizens. But actually casting a ballot has been an uphill battle for many tribal residents, including those here in Colorado. Even after obtaining official U.S. citizenship a century ago, Native Americans’ ability to vote has been consistently ignored or actively undermined. In recent decades, unequal access to in-person voting, early voting and election funding on tribal lands has been a particular issue...

Working with Colorado tribes, state lawmakers passed a set of election reforms earlier this year to expand voting access for Native Americans. Those reforms include the nation’s first automatic voter registration program of its kind for Native Americans. The program will cover both of the federally-recognized Native American reservations in the state—the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, and will allow the tribes’ governments to submit lists of members to be registered through the Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s office.

Griswold said the new registration system could make a big difference for Colorado's tribal communities.

"Seeing registration rates and turnout rates being much, much lower on tribal lands is a big problem that we want to solve,” Griswold said. “I personally believe automatic voter registration is one of the best ways to register voters in the state of Colorado, and all of our data shows how highly effective it is.”

Colorado is one of more than two dozen states that have automatic voter registration systems, but Colorado is the only state so far to extend its system to cover Native American reservations. When Colorado rolled out its system for the first time in 2020, about 250,000 people were added to the state’s voter rolls within the first year.

Now, [Secretary of State] Griswold hopes the new registration program will have a similar effect on tribal lands in the state. She wants to see the program in place in time for the 2024 election. For now, tribal leadership is reviewing the plan and providing feedback on it.

“It will not take us much time to register people once we start receiving data,” Griswold told KUNC. “But I think there's a couple of logistics to still work through.”

Measures to keep tribal members' information confidential were added recently at the request of the Southern Ute tribe, and lawmakers have also increased the number of on-reservation vote centers available for early voting and on Election Day.

This year’s election reforms also build on a slew of changes in recent years. For example, in 2019 Colorado lawmakers guaranteed in-person voting centers on tribal lands and loosened address requirements for voters."

Donald Trump said he would sign an executive order to abolish mail-in voting, a move he said Russia’s President Vladimir Putin supported.

Mailing ballots is a popular option for voters to avoid waiting in line at polling places on Election Day. Election security officials say that voting has never been more secure and that the president has no role overseeing elections. But Trump has long railed against mail-in voting as vulnerable to fraud – despite election experts, including those in his first administration, who said mail-in voting is secure.

Not all states track mail-in ballots by party. But among those reporting, about 41% of the ballots were cast by Democrats and 38% by Republicans, according to a report by the Council on Foreign Relations.

Trump's opposition to mail-in voting became more aggressive after he lost the election in 2020. His campaign aides told Congress his lead on Election Day was a "red mirage" before absentee ballots were counted and tipped the victory to Joe Biden.

A major looming dispute is over who runs elections. States traditionally set their own election rules, and federal authorities monitor the accuracy of the results, with the Justice Department potentially prosecuting fraud.

Trump contends states are “merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes.”

But election law experts say the president has no role in elections.

"This is wrong and dangerous," Rick Hasen, a law professor at University of California, Los Angeles, said in his blog Aug. 18. "The Constitution does not give the President any control over federal elections." 

As political battles continue around the nation over voting access and restrictions, a new survey finds that a majority of Americans (57%) say voting is “a fundamental right for every adult U.S. citizen and should not be restricted in any way.”

Fewer (42%) express the view that “voting is a privilege that comes with responsibilities and can be limited if adult U.S. citizens don’t meet some requirements.”

Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents overwhelmingly say voting is a fundamental right that should not be restricted in any way – 78% hold this view, while fewer than a quarter (21%) say it is a privilege. Two-thirds of Republicans and Republican leaners say voting is a privilege that can be limited if requirements are not met, compared with about half as many (32%) who say it is a fundamental right.

‘They want to make sure that Republicans can’t win an election by putting in all sorts of mail-in ballots.’ — Pres. Trump just gave away the worst-held Republican secret about voting access