Colorado is one of only five states that use party-led vacancy committees to fill open legislative seats when a lawmaker resigns, is removed or dies before a term is finished. At the start of last year's session, 24 sitting legislators had reached the Statehouse that way, the Colorado Sun reported. But vacancy appointments became even more pervasive as a wave of resignations hit the Capitol in 2023 — now accounting for nearly three in ten legislators.
Vacancy committees tapped three lawmakers for open slots in the House and Senate between August and October. On January 3, Democrat Chad Clifford was selected by a vacancy committee to fill former representative Ruby Dickson's House District 37 spot. Representative Said Sharbini's House District 31 seat will be filled on January 18.
Before the committees finish their work, here's everything you need to know about the ins and outs of Colorado's vacancy system:
How do vacancy committees work?
When a legislator leaves office, their political party has thirty days to appoint a replacement via a majority vote of a vacancy committee. If the party fails to do so, the governor gets to appoint the replacement instead. The members of the vacancy committee are selected by the district's central committee, consisting of local precinct organizers and party officers. Central committees are required to meet every other year to select vacancy committee members, who must be registered members of the committee's political party. All members of the central committee must be on the vacancy committee; in some districts, so must all partisan elected officials who live there.
Typically, vacancy committees consist of only a few dozen party insiders. The committee for House District 37 had 41 members choose a new representative from a pool of four candidates. For House District 31, there are sixteen committee members, and two candidates have declared so far.
Any registered Democrat who has resided in the district for at least one year is eligible to run for the vacant spot.
How to get involved
Registered Democratic and Republican voters can contact their state political party to potentially become precinct organizers or reach out to their local central committee for information about vacancy committee designation. The rules can vary slightly by district.However, it is too late to become a voting member for this month's vacancy elections. The central committee chairs overseeing House District 37 and House District 31 both say they do not add members to the vacancy committees once the sitting legislator's resignation is announced.
"While we can add committee members at almost any time, we choose not to as soon as a vacancy is announced because that would not be fair," says Lori Goldstein, chair of the Adams County Democratic Party. "Candidates could work to stack the deck for themselves, and that would not be a good optic."
But members of the public can watch livestreams of the vacancy elections and submit questions to the candidates to answer during a forum before the vote.
Pros and cons
Only four other states fill legislative vacancies in a way similar to Colorado, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Twenty-five states instead use special elections to choose a replacement for legislators who leave office early. Nineteen states allow the governor or Board of County Commissioners to appoint a replacement.Advocates of Colorado's vacancy committee system champion it for being faster and cheaper than special elections, which can take months to accomplish and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The faster the vacancy process is, the quicker the district's citizens get representation in the State Capitol, they say. And while small, the vacancy committees put the decision in more hands than when the governor or county commissioners decide on their own.
Critics complain that the vacancy committees give only a few dozen party insiders the power to select a representative for up to 169,000 Coloradans. They view it as an easy way for more ideologically extreme candidates to get into office, since the appointees with their built-in incumbency advantage almost always win the following election. It also completely excludes unaffiliated voters, who make up nearly 48 percent of Colorado's active voters, from the process.
Will Colorado's vacancy system change?
As vacancy appointments become more and more common in Colorado, debate surrounding the process has grown. Representatives Ron Weinberg, Lorena Garcia and Tim Hernández — who all recently won their seats through vacancy committees — have spoken out against the practice, calling it exclusionary and undemocratic.House Speaker Julie McCluskie says she'd be open to considering proposals for a different process. But she emphasizes the importance of filling an open seat as quickly as possible.
"Even if there was an alternative process, it is critical that we are filling a vacancy as quickly as we can," McCluskie says. "A state representative fulfills many roles — not only crafting new policy, but also helping constituents navigate state government and state agencies. It is important that constituents have a state representative."
Representative Bob Marshall is considering pushing for a policy change to address issues he sees with the current vacancy system. His proposal would prohibit vacancy-appointed legislators from running for the same office in the next immediate election, essentially making them interim legislators.
This would be the most cost-effective way to reduce the influence of vacancy elections on the legislature and to remove "the unearned advantages of incumbency" from the appointees, he says.
"It makes no sense for a democratic form of government to have more than a quarter — and growing — of its state legislators placed into office by small, cloistered groups of party insiders," Marshall adds. "Both parties have become adept, and too comfortable, with using vacancy appointments to keep power and control with party insider groups rather than ensuring it remains within the hands of whom it belongs: the people."
Marshall is still assessing the idea, and notes that the change might require referring a measure to the ballot for voter approval.
Other lawmakers aren't interested in changing the process. While Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez thinks the vacancy committee system could be strengthened, he says "It's a good way of democracy" as is. In fact, he doesn't have a problem with the current process, and questions whether having a vacancy committee choose a lawmaker is really more restrictive than a special election where money, influence and campaigning largely determine the outcome.
"I couldn't prove to you that it is more representative or not," Rodriguez says. "I'm not sure there is a right or wrong answer; it's just different."
