On Wednesday, Jan. 11, the 2017 Colorado State legislative session began in Denver and with it came a proposed draft bill from Rep. Jonathan Singer (D-Longmont). The bill would give jurisdictions the option to use approval voting methods in nonpartisan elections. This will be Singer’s third attempt to get such legislation passed. The concept is simple: “Vote for as many candidates as you like, the candidate with the most votes win,” Singer says. “It’s a very positive way of voting.” House Bill 17-0608 would allow voters to check as many candidates as they like in races where political affiliations aren’t on the ballot, such as city councils and school boards. But the law would not require any jurisdictions to use such methods. “I believe that the current system is not creating a system that gives people faith in our government,” Singer says, citing the frustration many voters felt during the 2016 presidential election. “Maybe if people felt like they had more choices, they’d have more faith in our electoral process.”
Singer first started thinking about different voting options when running as one of six candidates for two at-large seats in the 2009 Longmont City Council election.
“I came to the conclusion that if I stayed in that race, I was going to split the vote among some people that I agreed with and all of us would lose,” he says.
So he dropped out, becoming state representative in 2012. Since then, he’s been working on various versions of an approval voting bill. The last unsuccessful attempt was in 2014.
Full Article: Third time’s a charm – Boulder Weekly.