Student Voting Guide | Colorado
Registration
www.elections.colorado.gov (registration form available online)
You must register to vote at least 29 days before Election Day.[1] Mail-in registration forms must be postmarked by this date.[2] Colorado also has online registration which must also be completed by this date.
When you register to vote in person in Colorado, you may be required to answer some questions related to your residency; you should be prepared to be asked whether you plan to claim your registration address as your sole legal residence and abandon all claims to other legal residences.[3] You can register to vote if you will be 18 by the time of the next general election.[4]
Residency
At School. Students attending school in Colorado should be able to register and vote at their school address if they meet the following requirements. Under Colorado law, your residence for voting is your “principal or primary home.”[5] In practice, Colorado students can choose to register either at home or at school, depending on which one they consider their principal home.[6] Your principal home is where you have a fixed place to stay, and the place where, whenever you are away, you intend to return. The formal test for residence in Colorado is an objective test:[7] in considering whether your chosen address is your proper voting residence, elections officials can look to where you are employed or have other income sources or business pursuits, the residence of your family, where your things are located, or if you own any real estate.[8]
At Home. Students who lived in Colorado before attending college and wish to establish or keep their voting residency at their parents’ Colorado address should have no problem doing so, unless they have already registered to vote in another state.[9] Like all states, Colorado allows students to keep their voting residency even if they move out of the county or state to attend school. The only way you might lose this residency is if you “abandon” it by asserting residency in a new state. While registering to vote in another state is not automatically considered an abandonment of residency in Colorado, some judges or officials might view it as such.
Effect on Driver’s Licenses and Income Taxes. In Colorado, the residence address you use to vote has to be the same that you use to register your car, if you have one, or to pay state income taxes.[10]
Challenges to Residency. When you register, the clerk is obligated to deny your registration if he or she cannot determine your residency.[11] After you register, your eligibility can be challenged by another voter, but only up until sixty days before an election.[12] A hearing will be held in front of the county clerk, and the person challenging you must prove you are not eligible. You can also appeal the clerk’s decision to court within three days.
At the polls, your eligibility to vote can be challenged by poll workers, other voters, or partisan poll watchers.[13] You will then have to take an oath and answer some questions.[14] If you answer the questions and sign the oath, you’ll be able to vote normally.[15] If you do not take the oath, you will have to vote with a provisional ballot.[16] The ballot will be counted if the local elections official determines that you’re an eligible voter.[17]
Identification
Everyone who votes in person, whether on Election Day or by early voting, must show ID.[18] A student ID from a Colorado school satisfies the ID requirement if it has your name and photograph.[19] The following forms of ID are also accepted: Colorado driver’s license; Colorado state ID card; U.S. passport; employee photo ID card issued by the U.S., Colorado, or a local government within Colorado; a pilot’s license; a military ID card with photo; a certified copy of a U.S. birth certificate; a Medicare or Medicaid card; or a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or other government document that has your name and address on it.[20] If your ID has an address on it, that address must be in Colorado. If you are a student at a public college or university in Colorado, you can satisfy the ID requirement by showing a letter from your school registrar that includes your name, date of birth, and residence address.[21] Cell phone bills, cable bills, and online printouts of bills are also accepted.[22] If you cannot show ID, you will have to cast a provisional ballot.
Additionally, if you are a first-time voter who registered by mail, and the state has not been able to match the number you provided when you registered (your Colorado driver’s license or non-driver’s ID card number or the last four digits of your Social Security number), and you did not provide a copy of your ID when you registered, you will have to provide a copy of your identification with your absentee ballot.[23] Otherwise, your ballot will be treated as a provisional ballot.[24]
Absentee Voting
Any voter can vote absentee by mail in Colorado.[25] Applications for mail-in ballots have to be received by your local elections officials at least seven days before the election if you want to have the ballot mailed back to you.[26] If you will pick up your absentee ballot in person, then the deadline is the Friday before the election.[27] Blank applications are available on the web site of the Secretary of State and at the link above. Your local election officials have to receive your completed absentee ballot by 7:00 p.m. on Election Day.[28] As described in the ID section above, first-time voters who register by mail whose identity is not verified already have to submit a copy of their ID with their absentee ballot.[29] Neither your application nor your ballot has to be notarized or witnessed.
Early Voting
As a convenience to voters, Colorado has early voting beginning 15 days before an election and ending on the Friday before Election Day.[30] At early voting sites, you can vote any precinct’s ballot for that county. If you do not consider your school address to be your permanent address, or if you have not changed your residence yet, then early voting provides an opportunity to vote a ballot at the residence from which you are absent.
Last updated in April 2010
[1] Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 1-2-201(3) (West 2010).
[2] Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann § 1-2-508(1)(b).
[3] Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 1-2-204.
[4] Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 1-2-101(1).
[5] Colorado Secretary of State, Election FAQs, http://www.elections.colorado.gov/DDefault.aspx?tid=549 (last visited Feb. 11, 2010).
[6] See id.; Interview with Angela Lawson, Lobbyist and NVRA Coordinator, Office of the Colorado Secretary of State (June 12, 2008). Residency for voting has traditionally been equated with domicile under state law. See e.g., Sharp v. McIntire, 46 P. 115, 116 (Colo. 1896) (equating “residence” for voting with domicile as used in the state constitution).
[7] Gordon v. Blackburn, 618 P.2d 668, 671 (Colo. 1980).
[8] Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 1-2-102(1)(b) (West 2010).
[9] Colo. Const. art VII, § 4; Colo. Rev. Stat. § 1-2-103(1).
[10] Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 1-2-102(1)(c).
[11] Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann § 1-2-204(3) (West 2010).
[12] Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 1-9-101(1)(a) (West 2010).
[13] Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 1-9-101(1)(a).
[14] Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann § 1-9-203.
[15]Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 1-9-204(2) (West 2010).
[16] Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 1-9-201(1)(b).
[17] Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 1-8.5-105.
[18] Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 1-7-110(1).
[19] Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 1-1-104(19.5)(XI).
[20] Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann § 1-1-104(19.5) (West 2010).
[21] Colorado Secretary of State, Election FAQs, http://www.elections.colorado.gov/DDefault.aspx?tid=549 (last visited Feb. 11, 2010).
[22] Interview with Angela Lawson, Lobbyist and NVRA Coordinator, Office of the Colorado Secretary of State (June 12, 2008); 8 CCR 1505-1(g)(30.1.6).
[23] Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 1-8-113(3)(b) (West 2010).
[24] Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 1-8-113(1)(d).
[25] Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann § 1-8-102 (West 2010).
[26] Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 1-8-104 (3).
[27] Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 1-8-104 (3).
[28] Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 1-8-113(1)(a)(I) (West 2010).
[29] Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § (3)(b).
[30] Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§ 1-8-202, -208.
