Colorado Legislature Passes Reforms for Controversial Vacancy-Filling Process

Just ten people voted to designate Jamie Jackson as the representative of nearly 90,000 people in Colorado House District 41 in Arapahoe County.

A vacancy committee appointed Jackson in January to finish the two-year term of Iman Jodeh, who was re-elected to the seat merely two months prior. Jodeh stepped down after she was appointed to state Senate District 29 by a different vacancy committee, with just 35 people selecting her to represent the 162,000-person Arapahoe County district after Senator Janet Buckner announced her retirement sixteen days following her re-election.

Nearly one in four sitting Colorado legislators secured their seats via this vacancy process at one point. The practice has attracted growing criticism in recent years, coming to a head in November when three senators abruptly resigned, two of whom were re-elected to four-year terms less than three weeks prior.

Now, the legislature is making some changes. Lawmakers passed House Bill 25-1315 on May 2, adjusting the vacancy process so that appointees serve no more than one year before running in an election to keep the seats.

"We have the opportunity to empower our voters and make sure they get to vote for the people who will be representing them," bill sponsor Senator Barbara Kirkmeyer said during a committee hearing on April 29. "This year, the three [vacancy-appointed] senators are filling essentially full terms. ...People didn't have the opportunity to vote for their state senator, and it will be four years before they get that opportunity again."

Right now, when a lawmaker resigns, is removed or dies before a term is finished, a committee decides who takes the seat until the next regular election. The vacancy committee members can range from a handful to a few hundred people selected by the district's central committee, consisting of local precinct organizers and party officers.

Under HB 25-1315, legislators appointed to fill vacant seats will face a November election after up to a year. The specifics vary depending on when a vacancy occurs; some will run in special vacancy elections to finish out the term, while others will face a normal general election that treats it as an open seat. Vacancy election candidates must qualify by collecting signatures from 30 percent of vacancy committee members or at least 200 party members in their district. The bill also subjects vacancy candidates to campaign finance laws.

The proposal is not retroactive, so current vacancy-appointed legislators will not be affected.

HB 25-1315 passed with support from 85 out of 100 legislators. Its success comes after legislators rejected a resolution in April that sought to prohibit vacancy appointees from running for their seat in the following election, making it an interim position. That resolution was sponsored by Representative Bob Marshall.

"It's time to just rip the band-aid off," Marshall said during the House debate on April 22. "We have the most vacancy appointees in the entire nation. ...When you look from the outside in, it looks very bad. The trust and confidence of the voters have been eroding when they see that. How can it possibly be a Democratic system?"

Marshall also unsuccessfully tried to change HB 25-1315 to get rid of vacancy committees altogether, instead using special elections to fill open seats.

Colorado is one of only five states that use party-led vacancy committees to fill open legislative seats. In comparison, 25 states use special elections and fourteen states allow the governor to appoint a replacement.

Advocates of Colorado's vacancy committee system champion it for being faster and cheaper than holding an immediate special election, 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 a governor decides on their own.

"A snap special election is far more expensive and difficult for the clerk to implement at a reasonable cost; it is not one which actually invites greater participation," Representative Emily Sirota, another bill sponsor, said while opposing Marshall's proposed amendments. "Our proposal is to run a major party vacancy election in a November election when voters are already anticipating a ballot in the mail, they already expect to participate in an election."

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.

Opponents view the process 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 49 percent of Colorado's active voters, from the process.

"The current system is broken," Marshall added. "These vacancy committees, let's be honest, they're not random selections of the voters in these districts. ...If I die today, the vacancy committee in Highlands Ranch will probably pick someone to the left of some of our colleagues in Adams County — and I represent a Republican district. Do you think they feel represented by this system? No."

While much of the legislative debate centered on how to reform the vacancy system, not all legislators feel the system needs to change at all.

Representative Stephanie Luck is one of ten legislators who voted against HB 25-1315 during the final floor votes, arguing that vacancy committee members are the "best positioned" to make appointments.

"In the press, these people who have been active in their communities, who have taken on this additional voluntary task, are being characterized as political insiders, as if they meet in backrooms with cigars and bourbon. ...That's not the reality," Luck said during the House debate. "The reality is these people have invested their lives in making their communities better by filling these particular roles that were open to anyone and everyone."

HB 25-1315 will next be sent to the governor's office for consideration. Once Polis receives it, he will have thirty days to sign, veto or let the bill become law.