{"id":122238,"date":"2013-12-30T23:55:04","date_gmt":"2013-12-31T06:55:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/law-puts-younger-teenagers-on-voter-rolls\/"},"modified":"2013-12-30T23:55:04","modified_gmt":"2013-12-31T06:55:04","slug":"law-puts-younger-teenagers-on-voter-rolls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/law-puts-younger-teenagers-on-voter-rolls\/","title":{"rendered":"Law puts younger teenagers on voter rolls"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Parker\"
Parker<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

DENVER \u2013 When driver\u2019s license offices open Jan. 2, Colorado 16-year-olds can get something else when they pick up their licenses: a voter registration card.<\/p>\n

Teens still will have to be at least 18 before they can vote, but a law that took effect Jan. 1 this year allows 16-year-olds to preregister and be added to the voter rolls as soon as they are 18.<\/p>\n

Teens on the Colorado Youth Advisory Council pushed for the bill last spring.<\/p>\n

\u201cA surprising number of youths will take advantage of it,\u201d Graham said. \u201cIt will get more popular as it gets implemented.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Jan. 2 is the first day 16-year-olds can sign up to vote at the driver\u2019s license office, they have been able to register at the county clerk\u2019s office since Aug. 7, the day other portions of the law took effect.<\/p>\n

Conventional wisdom holds that young voters tend to support Democrats, and legislators seem to agree. Every Democrat in the House and Senate voted for the bill, while every Republican voted against it.<\/p>\n

House Democrats had tried in 2011 and 2012 to pass the bill, but they failed because they were in the minority until 2013.<\/p>\n

Secretary of State Scott Gessler, a Republican, opposed the bill, but now that it passed, his office is focused on implementing it, said his spokesman, Andrew Cole.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe challenge is to make sure people aren\u2019t confused,\u201d Cole said.<\/p>\n

Sixteen-year-olds can register to vote, but they can\u2019t cast a ballot until they turn 18. And they need to be ready to update their registrations if they move away after high school.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust because you register when you\u2019re 16, if you do move, you have to update your registration,\u201d Cole said.<\/p>\n

Voter registrations are public records, but the new law shields the identity of teenagers who register to vote until they turn 18.<\/p>\n

jhanel@cortezjournal.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

16-year-olds still can\u2019t vote until they turn 18<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":122239,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[13,265,1621],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-122238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-politics","tag-voting"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122238"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=122238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}