Milestones: Colorado eases registration with ‘Motor Voter’

A burdensome system

Not all that long ago, registering to vote in Colorado was no picnic.

To register, you had to visit a county clerk’s office that often opened at 9 a.m. and closed at 5 p.m. — meaning, if you had a 9 to 5 job, you had to take time off from work in order to register. The registration period closed more than a month before each election — an earlier deadline than you’d face in all but one other state. And clerks had the power to “purge” you from the list if you failed to vote in just a single general election.

These rules served to depress voter participation. But rules, of course, can be changed.

A modern solution

CoPIRG’s first attempts to persuade state lawmakers to reform the voter registration process met with no success.

Then, in 1982 Arizona enacted the nation’s first “Motor Voter” law. The idea was a simple update to reflect modern lives: People had to visit a state office when they applied for or renewed their licenses to drive. Why not allow them to register to vote at the same time? Especially since state registry offices already must verify their identities and places of residence?

It was a sensible idea, but the Colorado Legislature still failed to adopt Motor Voter. So CoPIRG and our allies decided to bring the issue to the voters via the ballot initiative process. Under the umbrella of Vote Colorado — a coalition that included CoPIRG, Common Cause, the state AFL-CIO, environmentalists, good government groups and other citizen organizations — we sent 300 volunteers across the state to collect the 47,000 signatures needed to put the proposal on the 1984 ballot.

In November of that year, with support from most of the state’s major newspapers and little organized opposition, the Motor Voter initiative was approved with 61% of the vote. The law would not only make it easier for citizens to register to vote, but would also limit election officials’ ability to remove voters from the rolls for missing an election.

Registrations jump to 82%

Motor Voter made a near-immediate difference. In the program’s first year, 175,000 people across the state registered to vote in motor vehicle bureau offices. By 1988, the percentage of eligible voters registered in Colorado rose to 82%, up from 59% in 1984. By 2021, the number of voters registering in vehicle registry offices was up to 250,000.

Then-CoPIRG director Tina Fahnenstiel-Zihlman, who led the coalition effort, emphasized how the Motor Voter effort also set a precedent for future initiative campaigns. “Up until Motor Voter, there was a period where no citizen initiatives passed. Motor Voter opened the door for citizen groups to win initiatives.”

The Colorado initiative also built momentum for Motor Voter proposals nationwide. In May 1993, President Bill Clinton signed the PIRG-backed national Motor Voter bill into law, allowing citizens to register to vote at government offices and, for the first time ever, through the mail. In the law’s first year, more than 30 million Americans used these provisions to register or update their voting information.

About this series: PIRG and The Public Interest Network have achieved much more than we can cover on this page. You can find more milestones of our work on democracy below. You can also explore an interactive timeline featuring more of our network’s democracy milestones.