The latest hobby horse of Colorado’s political left is a campaign to move springtime municipal elections to the fall — shoehorning runs for mayor and City Council into the November ballot alongside hyperpartisan, big-money races for governor, Congress and such. Proposals are now on the table to that effect in wide-ranging Colorado communities.

The purported aim is to pump up voter turnout. Fall elections in even-numbered years in Colorado — in which candidates declare party affiliation — typically draw more voters. Spring municipal elections are strictly nonpartisan in our state.

What the demands for change seem to ignore is that the very factors driving higher turnout in fall elections would serve to overshadow and undermine municipal races on the same ballot. 

Media bombardment fueled by mountains of campaign cash; high-profile candidacies of state and national office seekers, and voter-mobilization tactics employed by political parties — all fixtures of fall elections — are likelier to overwhelm voters’ bandwidth and smother their interest in workaday local races. Yet, those local races warrant at least as much attention.

Fall turnout draws a different voter profile — one defined by party affiliation, viewing the ballot through a partisan lens. Nonpartisan municipal elections  might serve to weed out dogma-driven voters in favor of those drawn to uniquely local concerns.

Which suggests an ulterior motive in the push for consolidating elections: Advocates actually want to add to the municipal mix those voters who are less motivated, and less informed, on local issues. That way, they’ll be more susceptible to partisan messaging and will vote accordingly even in municipal races. 

Hence a decision this week by Aurora’s new left-leaning City Council majority to ask voters — on next fall’s ballot, of course — to move all future municipal races to the fall in even-numbered years. Aspen’s City Council decided this week to make the same pitch to the mountain town’s voters.

In Colorado Springs — where a more sensible council majority sees the pitfalls in moving the municipal election — the left is going to court to get its way. 

In June, a coalition of progressive groups led by Common Cause Colorado filed suit against the city in Denver District Court, claiming the city’s longtime spring municipal election results in disproportionately lower turnout by the city’s Black and Hispanic voters. 

To the self-anointed election reformers, low turnout cannot simply reflect something as innocuous as low interest; it has to mean “voter suppression,” presumably by some diabolical conspiracy against “marginalized groups.” 

Then again, the plaintiffs might not even have to prove ill intent in this case. They contend a lower minority turnout, intended or not, is illegal under a 2025 law enacted by ruling Democrats at the legislature. A similarly left-leaning judge just might look favorably upon the claim.

It’s absurd, insulting and, arguably, racist to suggest any race, creed, ethnicity or echelon in any community is somehow less inclined toward evaluating local candidates and voting on them on a strictly local ballot.

It’s also ironic, considering two of the most vociferous opponents of dropping Colorado Springs’ springtime election are Mayor Yemi Mobolade and City Council member Roland Rainey — both of whom are Black. So is Aurora City Council member Stephanie Hancock, who voted with her council’s minority to keep her city’s municipal election in the spring. She convincingly stated the case for the status quo. 

“When we have these elections all lumped together like this, I believe that the local elections tend to get lost in the sauce,” Hancock said. “(Voters will) just start at the top of the ballot and just check all the way down, or they’ll just vote for the national candidates or … or whoever it is and forget the rest of them.”

Agreed. Let’s not go there.