A last-minute amendment to an elections bill has voting rights groups seeing red and calling on Gov. Jared Polis to veto the measure.

County clerks, on the other hand, would prefer to see Senate Bill 210 signed. The governor has until June 7 to sign the remaining bills from the 2024 session into law.

SB 210 began as the annual attempt to clean up election language. Notably, it had no outside opposition as it moved through the General Assembly and was approved with just a handful of “no” votes from Republicans in the House and Senate.

Voting groups are angry about an amendment added to the bill on May 5 by sponsor Rep. Emily Sirota, D-Denver, that applies to ranked-choice voting. This amendment is now pitting voting groups against the county clerks, who point out that the bill deals with much more than ranked-choice voting and urge Polis to sign it.

A coalition of voting groups, including the League of Women Voters, Let Colorado Vote, and Unite America, pointed to the problem with SB 210.

“The bill’s transparent attempt to frustrate and invalidate the will of the people as expressed through the citizen’s initiative process is an affront to the people of Colorado and the system of checks and balances that govern it,” the group said in a letter to the governor Thursday.

“Until the waning hours of the legislative session, the bill was a ministerial elections clean-up measure. Regrettably, all that changed when a provision was added that, through deceitful machinations, attempts to halt implementation of a pro-Democracy ballot measure before the voters even have a chance to vote on it.”

The amendment, known as L40, would delay ranked-choice voting to a series of pilots in 12 municipalities based on size before it could be implemented statewide.

Sirota told the House on May 5 that the amendment was worked out with “several clerks,” and that as “new voting methods” are implemented in different types of elections, “we have a good amount of data to analyze to ensure we’re not undermining Coloradans confidence in elections and that voters understand the ballot, and that communities of color, low-income voters and those with limited English proficiency are not harmed.” She did not mention that it impacted ranked-choice voting or ballot initiatives, and no one challenged the amendment.

The coalition said SB 210 “applies a convoluted, and perhaps unmeetable, set of terms and conditions which would indefinitely delay, and likely prevent, implementation” of ranked voting.

Ranked Choice Voting for Colorado also urged a veto, noting “the hurried passage of S.B.24-210 appears to have been a means to delay implementation of final-four plurality primaries at the expense of RCV,” according to RCV’s Linda Templin. Final four primaries refers to a pick-one, all-candidate primary with the top-four vote-getters proceeding to the general election, Templin said.

On the other side, county clerks urge Polis to sign the measure.

In a letter sent to Gov. Jared Polis Friday, the Colorado County Clerks Association noted that commissioners in Park and Custer counties “have openly discussed removing their County Clerks because they followed Colorado election law and refused to subscribe to election denialism. Language in this bill clarifies the role of the County Clerk and the Board of County Commissioners and ensures county commissioners cannot remove a clerk as the designated election official.”

SB 210 also gives clerks greater ability to set hours during an election without needing approval from county commissioners.

Other provisions supported by the clerks include a provision that allows the governor to move the convening of presidential electors if necessary to protect the ability of lawful elections to carry out their duty, a response to the efforts to allow fake electors who supported then-President Trump to participate in the elector process following the 2020 election. The bill attempts to rein in “bad actors” who overwhelm county clerk offices with open records requests, which the association called “denial of service attacks on election offices,” and expands the use of voter “drop” boxes on college campuses.

Matt Crane, executive director of the county clerk’s association, echoed some of the concerns raised by Sirota on the impact of ranked voting on communities of color. He said the amendment did not come from the clerks’ association, and they supported the idea of a study of RCV before being implemented statewide.

“We have lots of concerns about ranked-choice voting, things we’ve heard from other parts of the country,” Crane said. In California, their governor vetoed a bill on ranked-choice voting because of its potential impact on people of color and seniors, Crane said. There are also concerns that it will impact voters with disabilities and whether results can be audited. “We haven’t gotten answers to these questions,” he said.

He also noted opposition to ranked voting by groups like the NAACP. He explained that adding complexity to the ballot could impact underrepresented voters.

A recent study from Princeton University found that ranked voting presents difficulties for minorities, both candidates and voters. Princeton’s Nolan McCarty said, “High ballot exhaustion rates among minority-group voters would mean that those voters exercise less electoral influence.”

But former House Speaker Terrance Carroll told Colorado Politics the Princeton study is an outlier and that the line of argument is insulting because it assumes Black and brown people can’t figure out how to use ranked-choice voting.

In New York City, for example, ranked voting has been used to elect a Black mayor and a majority Black city council. Both do exceptionally well in ranked choice voting when used in communities of color and with women. “It’s okay if you don’t like it, but don’t hide behind Black and Brown folks on how it could harm us,” Carroll said.