Colorado adds voting protections to law, reforms vacancy elections under bills signed by Gov. Jared Polis

Gov. Jared Polis signed new laws Monday that codify federal voting protections in Colorado’s election laws and reform the state’s much-maligned process of replacing lawmakers who leave office early.

Officially dubbed the Colorado Voting Rights Act, Senate Bill 1 is aimed at ensuring that Colorado law prevents discriminatory voting or electoral processes from coming into effect here. Lawmakers introduced SB-1 amid fears that its federal mirror, the 60-year-old Voting Rights Act, would be further rolled back by the Trump administration or by federal court action.

“Those were hard-fought protections that the Civil Rights Movement and the Black community, particularly, fought and led to achieve,” said Sen. Julie Gonzales, a Denver Democrat. She sponsored SB-1 with fellow Democratic Reps. Junie Joseph and Jennifer Bacon. “We are taking action here today to ensure that every Coloradan can cast a ballot free from discrimination and free from fear.”

The law takes effect Jan. 1, 2026. It prohibits state or local government entities from allowing a “material disparity” between protected classes of voters. Essentially, the law means a city or the state couldn’t enact policies that make it harder for specific groups — Latinos, women, Black people — to vote or participate in elections.

It requires courts to “liberally construe” its provisions to prevent any “impairment” to registering to vote or casting a ballot, and it prohibits policies intended to dilute one group’s electoral power.

The law also will make it easier for tribal members to use other forms of identification to vote, and it will ensure that ballots are available in languages other than English.

Election reform bill

Polis also signed House Bill 1315, which changes the state’s controversial vacancy committee process. Under current law, legislators who leave office early are replaced by a person chosen by a partisan committee that depends on the departing lawmaker’s party.

The committees are made up of party officials, volunteers and elected officials, ranging from several dozen down to little more than a handful of people. The committees have proven a frequent avenue for legislators to enter the Capitol. The process has been maligned for the ability of candidates to lobby committee members directly and to try to stack committees with supporters ahead of the vote.

Four state senators — more than 10% of the chamber — were appointed to their seats in recent months after their predecessors resigned early.

HB-1315 keeps the vacancy committee process, the primary benefit of which is quickly replacing lawmakers for essentially no cost. But the new law requires any legislator who wins a vacancy appointment to run in a November election after serving a maximum of one year in the legislature.

That may mean standing in a regularly scheduled general election contest, when all House seats and half of state Senate seats are up for election anyway. But in odd-numbered years, like this one, legislators will have to run in special elections.

Like the vacancy process, those elections will be open to only certain voters. If a Democratic senator resigns, for instance, the special election held later will be open only to Democratic or unaffiliated voters.