In 2020, hundreds of thousands of Coloradans had their votes thrown out, uncounted. This was not done illegally and was done by the Secretary of State’s Office in accordance with state statute. It happened during the Democratic Presidential Primary, and it’s the fault of no one, other than our broken and archaic voting system.

The 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary had a full playing field, as is common in presidential primaries without a sitting president. And because of the timing of Colorado’s primary date, not all the candidates were still in the race when it became our turn to vote. In the days leading up to Colorado’s primary date, Michael Bennet, Pete Buttigieg, John K. Delaney and Amy Klobuchar all withdrew from the race. For Coloradans who hadn’t submitted or mailed their ballots, they simply had to cross out their vote and select a valid candidate. But the one million voters who had already returned their ballots were simply out of luck. If they had voted for a candidate who decided to withdraw, their vote was simply thrown away.

The worst part is, we don’t even know how many voters this happened to because those votes weren’t even counted as they were tossed. When asked to confirm or deny the figure of 150,000 invalidated votes, the Elections Office of the Colorado Secretary of State said “we cannot validate the number of votes cast for withdrawn candidates because those votes are not counted under Colorado law.”

The real question is: how do we make sure this never happens to another Coloradan, let alone hundreds of thousands? The answer lies in simple reform. We must adopt a voting system that reflects the reality of the presidential primary process. It must be one that won’t silence voters just because their favorite candidate decided to drop out last minute. Our current choose-one plurality system simply doesn’t get enough information from voters to handle the modern primary process.

If we used ranked-choice voting, then a voter’s preferences on all candidates would be known even if their favorite candidate dropped out. Their vote could simply transfer to their next choice as it would in a runoff round. If we used approval or STAR voting, a voter’s preferences for all the other candidates would be unaffected. The point isn’t which reform we choose (each has its own strengths and weaknesses). The point is any of these options would protect each Coloradan’s right to vote and to voice their genuine opinion in the primary process.

The right to vote is too important, too fundamental, to be taken away for something as trivial as your favorite candidate dropping out. Our voting system, usually the pride of Coloradans from across the political spectrum, failed the voters who had their votes thrown out in 2020. We, as a state, failed those voters. And there’s nothing stopping it from happening again in 2024 if we don’t learn and grow together.

It’s time for us to adopt an improved form of voting that can handle the modern political era, at the very least for presidential primaries. Let your state legislators know that this matters to you by voicing your support for voting reform. Our legislators are busy trying to get their own sponsored legislation passed, so it’s up to all of us to keep them informed on the issues that fall through the cracks of the news cycle but affect the very foundation of our democratic republic. This is the only way we can ensure that every Coloradan’s right to vote is preserved.

Curtis Harrison is a resident of Golden and an interim state lead for the Colorado Forward Party, an emerging political party that welcomes anyone across the political spectrum interested in solving problems in good faith. Grady Young is a resident of Denver and the interim communications lead of the Colorado Forward Party. The views represented are their own and do not represent an official stance of the Colorado Forward Party.