With voting rights weakened by the U.S. Supreme Court, Colorado Democrats are seeking ways to strengthen them, particularly in municipal elections. However, the bill to do so will likely draw legal challenges to its constitutionality.

On Monday, Senate Bill 1, the Colorado Voting Rights Act, won a party-line 22-12 vote in the state Senate.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Julie Gonzales, D-Denver, told the Senate State, Veteran and Military Affairs Committee last month the measure will continue her efforts to expand access to the ballot for every eligible voter.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is under attack, Gonzales said, and “if we cannot count on federal protection, Colorado can and should act on its own to strengthen the right to vote.”

Stateline reported recently that seven states, including Colorado, are considering their own version of the Voting Rights Act: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Maryland and New Jersey; Washington and New York have already passed a state-version of the federal law.

Gonzales said the bill would mirror the federal Voting Rights Act by prohibiting election practices that create disparities in participation for protected groups and by prohibiting election methods and district maps that disproportionately impair the ability of communities of color to elect candidates of their choice, she said. The bill also ensures the rights of civil rights groups and “harmed voters” to take action to enforce voting rights, even if the federal right is taken away, she added, and it creates protections for LGBTQ+ voters, prohibiting efforts to impair the right to vote based on gender expression and sexual orientation.

As introduced, the bill would also require multilingual ballots for qualifying municipalities based on the population or the percentage of the voting-age population who are minority language speakers. That’s defined by either 2,000 voters or 2.5% of voters within a jurisdiction who don’t speak English well. An amendment in the Senate changed that to 3,000 voters.

Gonzales said she’s proud of the work that has been done on statewide elections and the “gold standard” for Colorado’s elections. However, in some elections, primarily municipal elections, there is no same-day voter registration, nor are there language assistance or multilingual ballot requirements.

The bill has drawn strong objections from municipalities, citing its costs and the fact that it applies only to municipal elections, not to statewide, school board, or special district elections.

The Colorado Municipal League’s Heather Stauffer told the committee the bill is unconstitutional for home-rule municipalities. The state Supreme Court has affirmed, over the course of 113 years, that municipal elections are a matter of purely local concern, and the cost of defending a claim under federal law runs into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

For statutory municipalities, which are the smallest communities with the fewest resources, defending a claim could be devastating,” she said. This is an attempt to change policy through litigation, she said.

“It is very clear that we have the absolute authority to run our own municipal elections,” said Pete Schulte, the city attorney for the city of Aurora. “This does not mirror the federal Voting Rights Act,” which requires express or intentional discrimination in how voting is done. This bill goes off of statistics, he said. There’s no requirement of proof of discrimination, and the bill will lead to lawsuits on its constitutionality,” he said.

Karen Goldman, who has served as a municipal clerk and the former Secretary of the Senate, spoke on behalf of municipal clerks and the Municipal League.

“We were dismayed” to read SB 1, which inferred that municipal elections created barriers,” she said. “She also took Gonzales to task for her comments that municipal elections are run without rules, regulations or laws, which Goldman said is categorically untrue.”

To Schulte’s point about proving intentional discrimination, the Washington, D.C. Campaign Legal Center submitted a letter highlighting that Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act permits litigants to establish a violation of the VRA without first proving discriminatory intent. But that section is under attack from the U.S. Supreme Court, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. In the 2021 decision Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the Court made it significantly harder to mount successful Section 2 challenges against discriminatory voting rules, according to the Center.

In favor of SB1, Loveland City Council member Laura Light-Kovacs noted that despite the state’s reputation as a leader in voter access, Colorado still has one of the broadest racial turnout gaps in the country—a nearly 20-point difference in 2020 between white voters and voters of color.

SB 1 would ensure that all Coloradans, regardless of race, language, or disability status, have fair access to the ballot, she said. “This legislation does not take away local control. Municipalities will continue to run their elections as they do now—this bill simply sets clear, common-sense standards to ensure voting remains fair, transparent, and free from discrimination,” and added that local governments will still retain their authority.

The bill will also ensure that the Attorney General has the authority to act against discriminatory election practices, and it expands access to multilingual ballots, she said.

By the time the bill reached the Senate floor last Friday, it had been amended a dozen times and was subject to further changes, including an amendment with input from municipal clerks.

Gonzales noted that the state, municipalities and counties are already subject to the federal Voting Rights Act. Regarding the costs of multilingual ballots, Gonzales offered an amendment to allow counties and municipalities to collaborate on any additional expenses.

The bill now heads to the House.