(Colorado Newsline) The Colorado Senate passed a bill on Friday that would require county sheriffs to better work with county clerks to ensure eligible voters who are confined in jails can cast ballots.

Senate Bill 24-72 would require county sheriffs to designate someone who would be responsible for informing confined individuals of their eligibility to vote and coordinating with the county clerk to set up a temporary, in-person voting center at their local county jail.

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“This bill, colleagues, is about ensuring that we build upon the ability for eligible Coloradans to vote,” state Senator Julie Gonzales, a Denver Democrat who sponsored the bill, said on the Senate floor Thursday. “Sixty percent of the jail population currently in the state of Colorado are pretrial detainees. In this country, you are innocent until proven guilty, and so if you are detained in jail before you have been convicted of any offense — or if you’ve been convicted of a misdemeanor — you should still have access to the ballot.”

Gonzales said she worked with a number of county clerks and sheriffs in developing the bill. She said that in the 2020 and 2022 general elections combined, over 9,000 eligible confined voters did not receive a ballot.

Republican senators expressed concerns that were similar to those shared in the bill’s first committee hearing, related to the costs needed to make the program work, staffing issues, lockdown protocols and limited space within jails.

“My difficulty with the bill is I don’t think we need to take a ballot box to the jail for a day. I think that’s difficult to do,” state Senator Bob Gardner, a Colorado Springs Republican, said.

He said that because Colorado has such a robust mail ballot system in place, he thinks someone with the sheriff’s office could more easily make sure people who are eligible and want to vote get their mail ballots. Gonzales said the mail ballot system has not worked for incarcerated people.

“We actually heard from people who testified during the committee who had been confined whose family member or loved one or roommate had attempted to mail them their ballot, and then were not allowed to actually receive the ballot by the … jail officials,” Gonzales said.

The bill will now go through the Colorado House, and if approved would require the governor’s signature to become law.

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