Politics

Tiffany Lee, the county clerk and top elections official in southwestern Colorado’s La Plata County, wasn’t sold at first on the state’s new law requiring every jail to create an in-person polling place for incarcerated voters. Lee, who was elected as a Republican but is now unaffiliated, said she and the local sheriff didn’t appreciate a new mandate and felt it was too one-size-fits-all to work for a diverse state.

But Lee’s apprehension melted away on Oct. 22, when she and the sheriff opened their first in-person voting session at the jail, located in the city of Durango. Lee recounted how a young incarcerated woman whom she helped cast her ballot profusely thanked her, and told Lee that the experience of voting made her feel like a part of her community.

“I had tears in my eyes,” Lee told Bolts. “I thought to myself: This is exactly where I need to be today. It was just an awesome feeling.”

Overall, 43 people would end up voting from the La Plata County jail in the November election, five times the number who voted there in the 2022 midterms, and double the turnout there in the 2020 presidential election.

Throughout the rest of Colorado, the increase was even greater: At least 2,332 people voted from jail in November, according to state data, a dramatic spike in turnout from just 231 incarcerated voters in 2022 and 380 in 2020. Many Colorado counties posted significant jail turnout in November after having zero, or nearly zero, jail voters in past cycles.