National GOP Group Backs Voter Citizenship Question for Colorado Ballot
Article publisher:
Westword
Article date:
10 October 2019
Article category:
Colorado News
High
Article Body:
Citizen Voters Inc., a national political group backed by a former Republican lawmaker from Missouri, has poured $850,000 into a ballot initiative in Colorado as of September 30 that attempts to exclude non-citizens from possibly voting in local elections.
Proponents of Initiative 76 are gathering signatures to change the part of the Colorado Constitution that pertains to voter qualifications from "every citizen of the United States" to "only a citizen of the United States." Such a change, backers say, will eliminate the possibility that cities in Colorado could open up some of their elections to non-citizen voters.
Citizen Voters Inc. helped get a similar measure on the ballot in North Dakota in 2018; it passed with 66 percent of the vote. Florida will also vote on such an initiative in 2020 that Citizen Voters backed...
"If San Francisco is allowing non-citizens to vote, how far behind is Boulder?" Athanasopoulos asks. "The entire purpose of this initiative is to take ambiguous, inclusionary language and make it specific and exclusionary."...
Colorado law precludes non-citizens from voting in state elections, and federal elections are also only open to American citizens. But according to the Colorado Secretary of State's Office, no law or constitutional amendment currently exists that would prevent cities from allowing non-citizens to vote....