Colorado § 1-5-902 - Legislative declaration - intent.

§ 1-5-902. Legislative declaration - intent.

(1) The general assembly hereby finds and declares that:

(a) Congress enacted the language minority provisions of the federal "Voting Rights Act of 1965" because "through the use of various practices and procedures, citizens of language minorities have been effectively excluded from participation in the electoral process...";

(b) Today, the formula in section 203 of the "Voting Rights Act of 1965" requires only the Colorado counties of Conejos, Costilla, Denver, and Saguache to provide election materials in both English and Spanish and requires one other Colorado county to provide information in Ute;

(c) Based on the 2017 five-year estimates specified in the United States bureau of the census American community survey, there are one hundred three thousand one hundred forty-six eligible electors in Colorado who speak English "less than very well". An estimated eighty-two thousand ninety-six of those eligible electors live in counties where ballots and other election materials are not available in languages other than English.

(d) Further compounding the problem of ballot access for minority language speakers is the reading level at which Colorado's ballots are written. For many minority language speakers the ballot is simply incomprehensible even if they speak and read some English.

(e) Section 203 of the "Voting Rights Act of 1965" covers a jurisdiction when the number of United States citizens of voting age in that jurisdiction has a single language group that:

(I) Is more than ten thousand people of voting age, is more than five percent of all voting-age citizens, or is on an American Indian reservation and exceeds five percent of all reservation residents; and

(II) The illiteracy rate of the group is higher than the national illiteracy rate;

(f) Colorado does not currently expand minority language ballot access beyond federal requirements; and

(g) Colorado has an opportunity to make the ballot accessible to more eligible electors and provide them with meaningful access to a ballot that they are able to read, understand, and vote.

(2) The general assembly further finds and declares that the intent of this part 9 is to:

(a) Provide ballot access to electors throughout the state while balancing the reality of limited state and county resources; and

(b) Expand minority language ballot access without changing or reducing the state's existing responsibilities pursuant to section 203 of the "Voting Rights Act of 1965".

Source: L. 2021: Entire part added, (HB 21-1011), ch. 366, p. 2408, § 1, effective June 28.