Colorado voting-age turnout rates in 2012 were unchanged from 2008. Our turnout levels surged above national norms.

Year Voting Aged Turnout (CO) CO Above US
2012 64.7% 11.1%
2008 64.7% 7.8%
2004 61.2% 5.8%
2000 53.7% 3.7%

Both 2008 and 2012 had Colorado’s highest-ever number of votes in the Presidential race (adjusted for population). Turnout is not a problem for Colorado.

The Associated Press found high black turnout across the nation – higher than white turnout. Colorado’s exit polls reported extraordinary turnout by non-Anglo voters. Given these results, claims of minority vote suppression in Colorado were bogus. Democrat fear-mongers were flat wrong.

Now we face new, real challenges to good elections.

Clean elections start, as the liberal Brennan Center says, with clean lists of voters. Indeed, they are so essential the US Justice Department faces litigation for not enforcing the law regarding properly “removing names from the voter registration list.” Several Colorado counties have the same voter list defects that Justice ignored elsewhere.

The Democrats’ solution is to make things much, much worse. Their election day registration scam is sure to make clean voter lists impossible. But that’s not the only problem.

In 2012, Colorado wait times to vote were about 8 minutes while the national average was 13.3 minutes according to MIT’s Charles Stewart III. North Carolina, a state with election day registration and similar demographics to Colorado’s, had 50% higher wait times. Stewart also reports that, nationally, one in eight voters waited more than half an hour.

What this means, given the increased time election officials must spend actually registering people on election day before they vote, is this.

Coloradan’s wait times to vote will increase 50% or more. Some places will have horrible lines.

Democrats are trading our efficient, voter-friendly operations for a system – given Colorado’s already stellar levels of voting – that’s both unnecessary and hugely inconvenient for Coloradans who prefer to vote in person and guarantee their vote won’t be lost in the mail. (We may not see these problems in a low-turnout, boring election next year, but 2016? Look out.)

Media Trackers has even more data on why this bill is a baaaad idea [here] … so we shall see whether facts (which don’t matter to Democratic legislators) might influence Hickenlooper to use his veto pen.

Governor, before you decide, have your staffers read Stewart’s report. It shows that Democratic neighborhoods have the worst, longest lines. Do you really want to have a system that makes it much harder for Democrats to vote than Republicans? And one that disincentivizes Coloradans from registering to vote in a timely manner?