[SolidSupplySide]

Badger, you've got to understand that the law has changed.

Let's assume there is a voter in Adams County who voted provisionally without a good reason in 2002. He does the same thing in 2004. Based on our knowledge of Roe v Alabama, will his vote count in 2004 if the legislature does not act in the interim? If his vote does not count in 2004, we have a new equal protection problem.

[Badger1]

SolidSupplySide, your refrence to Roe v Alabama would be an argument against counting the absentee ballots that did not have the check off box for stating the reason the voter wanted to cast a provisional ballot. Roe v Alabama states that "Fundamental fairness requires election officials to refrain from changing the rules for counting ballots once the election is over." Using this reasoning, all the provisional ballots in Jefferson county should have been discarded. I do not believe this would have been the right thing to do, and I don't think you do either.

The Colorado Secratary tried to reconcile the law with the situation by applying the law as written as closely as possible. However, this brought up equal protection arguments, allowing the judge to rule that all provisional ballots be counted so that all the votes would be treated equally.

As I said before, the Colorado Legislator needs to modify the law and require that all provisional ballot applications be exactly the same throughout the state so this situation does not occur again.