Unaffiliated voters have until today – May 29th – to decide if they’d like to receive a Democrat or Republican ballot in the mail. This is also the deadline for any registered Democrats or Republicans to change their affiliation.
If unaffiliated voters don’t select which ballot they’d like to receive, they’ll receive 2 ballots in their mailbox: 1 for the Democrat primary, and 1 for the Republican.
For the first time in Colorado, unaffiliated voters will be able to participate in either the Democrat or Republican election primary.
In November of 2016, voters approved 2 ballot initiatives that opens up the primary election to thousands of unaffiliated voters in the state.
The same goes for any unaffiliated voters that request a 3rd party ballot, since none of those parties are participating in an open primary- unaffiliated voters requesting those will receive both Democrat and Republican ballots.
However, you’ll still only be able to turn in 1 ballot- if you send back both, your vote won’t count.
To select a ballot, visit the following link: govotecolorado.com.
Unaffiliated voters can also go to their county’s voter service center to select a ballot.
While voters will remain unaffiliated after the primary, the party they voted for in the primary election will be public record (but not which candidate the voter selected).
In El Paso County, election officials asked unaffiliated voters to reach a ballot decision two weeks ago, as ballots were about to be printed. Clerk Chuck Broerman said the impact of sending two ballots to unaffiliated voters could cost an extra $200,000.
Currently, 39, 262 unaffiliated voters in Colorado have asked for a specific party’s ballot.
21,929 (55.9% of the requesting population) have asked for Democrat ballots and 14,864 (37.9% of the requesting population) have asked for Republican ballots.
In El Paso county, there are 140,444 unaffiliated registered voters, of those 3,719 (2.6%) have asked for a ballot to a specific party.
2,133 (57% of the requesting population) have asked for Republican ballots and 1,586 (43% of the requesting population) have asked for Democrat ballots.
In Pueblo county, the unaffiliated voter population amounts to 30,514 voters.
So far, 246 unaffiliated voters have requested Democratic ballots, and 236 have requested Republican ballots.
34 voters have asked for ballots to 3rd parties.
