Primaries Count, Even When You’re Busy Mowing the Lawn
Colorado’s primary election is June 30.
That sentence alone will cause a decent percentage of otherwise responsible adults to look up from their coffee and say, “Wait, already?”
Yes. Already.
Primaries are where a lot of Colorado’s real political decisions get made, usually while half the electorate is mowing the lawn, scheduling summer vacations, and pretending November is the only election that counts. November gets the yard signs, the panic texts, the cable-news graphics, and the breathless coverage from people who treat politics like a horse race with worse hats. But in many races, especially in places where one party has a strong advantage, the primary is where the meaningful choice happens.
So pay attention now.
The Colorado Sun put together a useful primary election guide, and this is exactly the kind of thing voters should keep handy. Not because any one guide should do your thinking for you, but because clean information matters. Voting is not supposed to feel like assembling IKEA furniture during a power outage, though government and party machinery often do their best to make it feel that way.
Here are the basics.
Colorado’s primary election is Tuesday, June 30. The winners of the primaries move on to the general election in November. Ballot measures will wait until November too, so this round is about candidates, from federal races down to county-level offices that often have a more direct effect on your daily life than whatever cable news is hyperventilating about this week.
If you are an active registered voter in Colorado, you should receive a primary ballot in the mail, with some exceptions for voters registered with third parties. County clerks may begin mailing ballots June 8, and ballots will start arriving after that. The practical advice is simple: when your ballot arrives, do not toss it onto the kitchen counter under the grocery coupons, the dentist bill, and the mysterious warranty notice for an appliance you no longer own. Open it. Read it. Deal with it.
Check your voter registration at GoVoteColorado.gov. Make sure your address is current. If your registration is inactive, it may be because a prior ballot was returned as undeliverable, and you can update your registration online or through your county clerk. Colorado does not have a registration deadline that prevents you from voting in this primary as long as you are registered before polls close on June 30, but if you want to receive a ballot in the mail, you need to be registered by June 22.
Your ballot must be received by 7 p.m. on June 30. Not postmarked. Received. This is not a vibes-based deadline. If you still have your ballot after June 22, the Secretary of State’s guidance is to return it in person at a drop box or voting center instead of mailing it back and hoping the postal gods are in a generous mood. You can also use BallotTrax to track your ballot and confirm when it is accepted.
Unaffiliated voters need to pay special attention. Colorado’s unaffiliated voters make up more than half the state’s electorate, and active registered unaffiliated voters will receive both a Democratic and Republican primary ballot. That does not mean you get two votes. It means you get a choice of which primary to participate in. Fill out and return one ballot. One. If you return both, both will be rejected.
This is not complicated, but it is apparently complicated enough that it needs to be said every cycle. Pick one ballot. Vote it. Return it. Recycle the other one, frame it, use it to level a wobbly table, whatever. Just do not return both.
And while we are at it, stop treating down-ballot races like political garnish. County commissioners, sheriffs, clerks, treasurers, assessors, district attorneys, school board members, legislators, and local officials do not become unimportant just because national media does not know they exist. These offices deal with roads, land use, public safety, elections, taxes, schools, development, budgets, and the machinery of government closest to your front porch.
A senator you see on television can annoy you. A bad local official can complicate your life.
That does not mean every voter needs to become a full-time campaign researcher with a spreadsheet, a caffeine problem, and three monitors. But responsible citizenship requires more than recognizing a name because the candidate’s mailer was glossy enough to survive a hailstorm. Look at records. Look at votes. Look at actual experience. Look at who funds the campaign. Look at whether the candidate can explain the job without sounding like the inside of a consultant’s briefcase.
“Being informed” means more than reading campaign slogans polished by professionals who could make a landfill sound like a wellness retreat.
Also, be careful with lazy partisanship. I am a conservative Republican, and I do not hide that from anyone. But “my team” is not a substitute for judgment. Parties matter because principles matter. But parties are also made of human beings, and human beings are fully capable of disappointing you before breakfast.
Ask whether the candidate understands the office. Ask whether they respect the Constitution. Ask whether they know the difference between public service and self-promotion. Ask whether they can count, because that skill remains tragically underrated in government.
The media will spend plenty of time covering fundraising, personalities, drama, and the horse-race angle. Some of that is useful. Money matters. Momentum matters. Endorsements can matter. But none of those things should replace the voter’s job, which is to decide who should be trusted with power.
That is the part we keep trying to outsource.
Then we complain that the clowns keep winning.
Colorado makes voting relatively easy. Ballots come in the mail. Drop boxes are available. Registration can be checked online. Ballot tracking exists. Voting centers open by June 22 at the latest for those who want or need to vote in person. You can still dislike plenty about politics, parties, government, campaign finance, and the general carnival atmosphere of modern elections. I certainly do. But the mechanics are not impossible.
The real problem is not usually access. It is attention.
A republic requires citizens who can be bothered. That is not very glamorous, but neither is self-government. It is maintenance work. It is reading the instructions before the machine breaks. It is checking the oil, tightening the bolts, and occasionally admitting that the awful noise coming from under the hood is not going to fix itself.
So check your registration. Know your deadlines. Return your ballot early. If you are unaffiliated, return only one primary ballot. Research the candidates beyond the mailers. Pay attention to the races that do not make cable news. And do it now, not the night before the deadline while standing in your kitchen asking why democracy has so many envelopes.
Constitution first does not just mean politicians should stay in their lane. It means citizens have work to do too.
Vote like the job matters.
Because it does.
Source: The Colorado Sun
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