Unaffiliated voters are asking for more Democratic than GOP ballots in the Colorado primaries

[RandySF]

For the first time, Colorado’s roughly 1.2 million unaffiliated voters will be able to cast ballots in Democratic or Republican primaries, including in this year’s race for governor.

So far, more have been choosing Democratic than Republican ballots.

Because of a new law passed by voters in 2016, unaffiliated voters can participate in the primary elections, but they can only vote in one party’s primary. Unaffiliated voters can request a party’s ballot online. If they don’t, they will be mailed two ballots in the mail — one for each major party. But unaffiliated voters are only allowed to mail in one of those ballots. If they mail in two, their votes will not count.

The primaries aren’t until June 26 — and the ballots aren’t even set yet — but unaffiliated voters can go online and select which ballot they want to mailed to them before Election Day. When new unaffiliated voters register to vote they can also choose which ballot they want when registering, like at the DMV, according to the Secretary of State’s office.

The ballots won’t hit their mailboxes until a couple weeks before the June 26 primary election.

Since the option for unaffiliated voters to choose a party’s ballot became available last August, 55 percent of the roughly 34,000 Coloradans who did have asked for a Democratic ballot, and 38 percent asked for one for the Republican Party primary, according to numbers from the Secretary of State’s office. The remaining 7 percent have requested ballots for a third party.

For the past month, Republican Secretary of State Wayne Williams has been rolling out an educational campaign to make sure the state’s largest population of voters — those who don’t choose a political party — know they can participate in the primaries, and to help ensure they don’t spoil their ballots by trying cast more than one in June.


http://www.coloradoindependent.com/170008/unaffiliated-voters-colorado-democrat-republican

[DavidDvorkin]

1. I wish I knew the reason

Assuming that there is one main reason.

It could be that they're more interested in the Democratic races, identify more with the Democratic candidates, or think that the Democrats hold the edge and so the Democratic races are the important ones.

Or it could be that they normally lean Republican and want to do what they can to help the weakest Democratic candidates win the party's nominations.