On March 12, the Colorado House State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee defeated HB 1062 by 3-8. This is the bill to let local governments use Approval Voting for non-partisan elections. Approval Voting lets a voter vote for as many candidates as desired, even though only one is to be elected.
Three of the four Republicans on the Committee voted for the bill, but one Republican, and all seven Democrats, voted against it. This was somewhat surprising given that the House sponsor is a Democrat, and the ACLU, Common Cause, and the League of Women Voters testified in favor of the bill. The bill was also supported by Colorado’s three ballot-qualified minor parties. Thanks to Jeff Orrok and Frank Atwood for this news.
Many thanks to Frank Atwood for his work on this issue!
Frank Atwood is a trooper.
Thanks to Richard Winger for highlighting the diversity of support this bill had. How sad that the major party typically billed as being more “progressive” was unanimously opposed to what would have been positive progress in the elections space.
It sucks that approval voting doesn’t have more support. Approval voting is less vulnerable to spoilage and voter apathy, and is the simplest method to understand for laymen and experts alike.
The reason we have our current voting method is that it was least time consuming back when people voted by coming up and publicly declaring who they were voting for.