Tuesday, November 24, 2020

Colorado: A Model Voting System – One of the Nation’s Highest Turnouts

Colorado’s mail-back voting system, established in 2013, has now successfully managed four federal elections starting in 2014, including two presidential elections in 2016 and 2020, with record turnout.

Colorado is historically among a handful of states with the highest level of voter turnout. Often the same states are at or near the top – Minnesota at 80 percent of its eligible population voting, Maine was 79 percent and Colorado 76 percent. Many of the worst turnout states are regularly at the bottom, such as West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas (source: U.S. Elections Project).

Colorado’s 3.3 million votes was a half a million vote increase since the last presidential election. Democratic registrants exceeded Republicans by 81,000, but unaffiliated voters dominated both parties by more than 200,000.

The 86 percent of registered voters participating in the 2020 Colorado election, joined a national record turnout of 159 million counted on November 20. That represents a 20 million vote increase since the 139 million voted in 2016.

The Trump campaign added nearly 11 million more voters than he received in 2016, but Biden exceeded that with 14 million from a nearly 3 million vote higher base, leading to his 6 million popular vote advantage (more than 5 million votes went to third parties in 2016).

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