Spring Break
Do away with uncontested elections and save money
Seth Anthony
Issue date: 7/23/08 Section: Opinion
Did you know that there's an election in just a few weeks? It's OK if you didn't, because you can safely skip it; there's no way your vote could possibly matter.
The elections being held on Aug. 12 are the Democratic and Republican party primaries, to choose each party's candidates for races from U.S. Senate down to county commissioner.
The reason your vote won't matter is that none of the races are contested -- there's only one candidate for each position and there are no write-in lines. In short, the results of all 20 contests that Larimer County voters get to cast ballots in are already a foregone conclusion.
For all of this, Larimer County will still open multiple voting sites and early voting locations. All told, this will cost about $250,000, according to Scott Doyle, the Larimer County Clerk and Recorder, whose office will manage these non-elections. That's money we could save by canceling these unnecessary events.
Canceling uncontested elections is actually fairly common in Colorado -- it happens frequently in special districts and quite often in small municipalities. Funding party primaries where there is no competition, on the other hand, amounts to free publicity for those parties and their candidates.
We can do without these uncontested elections and save the taxpayers money, and we can put the savings to good use by making mail ballots and voter registration forms postage-paid.
Here's the situation: About 30 percent of Colorado voters cast their election ballots by mail. For Fort Collins municipal elections, all balloting is done by mail. But even though the clerk's office already pays for sending out ballots, it's required that voters pay the postage themselves to send them back.
In the 19th century, when people were required to pay a fee in order to vote, it was called a poll tax and ruled to be unconstitutional. In the 21st century, where helping out everyone who wants to cast a vote is a nearly unquestioned social goal, why hasn't Colorado taken this easy step?
The elections being held on Aug. 12 are the Democratic and Republican party primaries, to choose each party's candidates for races from U.S. Senate down to county commissioner.
The reason your vote won't matter is that none of the races are contested -- there's only one candidate for each position and there are no write-in lines. In short, the results of all 20 contests that Larimer County voters get to cast ballots in are already a foregone conclusion.
For all of this, Larimer County will still open multiple voting sites and early voting locations. All told, this will cost about $250,000, according to Scott Doyle, the Larimer County Clerk and Recorder, whose office will manage these non-elections. That's money we could save by canceling these unnecessary events.
Canceling uncontested elections is actually fairly common in Colorado -- it happens frequently in special districts and quite often in small municipalities. Funding party primaries where there is no competition, on the other hand, amounts to free publicity for those parties and their candidates.
We can do without these uncontested elections and save the taxpayers money, and we can put the savings to good use by making mail ballots and voter registration forms postage-paid.
Here's the situation: About 30 percent of Colorado voters cast their election ballots by mail. For Fort Collins municipal elections, all balloting is done by mail. But even though the clerk's office already pays for sending out ballots, it's required that voters pay the postage themselves to send them back.
In the 19th century, when people were required to pay a fee in order to vote, it was called a poll tax and ruled to be unconstitutional. In the 21st century, where helping out everyone who wants to cast a vote is a nearly unquestioned social goal, why hasn't Colorado taken this easy step?
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