Unlike the U.S. Constitution, the Constitution of the state of Colorado does include a provision for a secret ballot, Colorado legal experts recently said. “The Colorado Constitution … provides for a secret ballot,” said Richard B. Collins, professor of law at the University of Colorado and director of the Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law. “Article VII, Section 8 of the Colorado Constitution says ‘secrecy in voting is preserved,’” he said. With that provision and the section saying that “no ballot can be marked whereby the ballot can be identified as the ballot of the person casting it,” he said, it seems clear that the state Constitution provides for a secret ballot. “No one is contradicting that,” he said.
Collins, the author of “The Colorado State Constitution: A Reference Guide,” said, “I just think that no one is supposed to be able to see how someone voted.” A democracy needs a secret ballot, Collins said. “There are countries that don’t have a secret ballot, and we don’t consider them democracies,” he said. “While the United States Constitution does not provide the right for a secret ballot, it’s pretty clear that, in the Colorado Constitution, there is a constitutional provision for a secret ballot,” legal authority Carrol Multz said..