Fort Collins Election Codes, Autumn 2024

From the city’s website: The Election Code Committee identifies and evaluates ideas for improvements to City election laws and procedures.

This report is from minutes of a meeting on 9/11/24 by the Election Reform Team of the League of Women Voters of Larimer County.

Campaign Finance Disclosure

Does a link to a website fulfill the “Paid-for-by” message requirement? Robbie Moreland, a citizen engaged in local civics, believes it is not. She said anybody can include a link, while a “Paid-for-by” statement is provable in a campaign finance report. She pointed out that if an ad doesn’t have a corresponding expenditure, then either the candidate’s campaign did not pay for the ad, or they forgot to report the expenditure.

New Discussion Items

• The ECC discussed allowing campaign violations that cannot be cured (because the election is over) to simply be paid with a fine. They did not decide whether those payments can come from campaign funds or not.
• The ECC is considering raising campaign contribution limits to possibly $400 each.
• RCV Voter Outreach and Education (VOE) of the City Clerk's office is doing a field trip to Boulder on Oct 11 for lessons learned from a review with the Boulder Clerk.
• The FC City Clerk is looking at how to better educate candidates on the city's rules on yard signs. This came up a lot before the Nov 2023 election.
• The ER team has not heard back from the City Clerk about whether and how the LWV may help educate voters about Ranked Choice Voting (Instant Runoff Voting).

Fort Collins Election Code Committee 10/21/2024

Complaint process and contribution limits

• The committee is considering doubling current campaign contribution limits, plus inflation. Current campaign limits are $100 for contributions to the campaign of a mayoral candidate and $75 to a District Council member candidate. Potential changes would be $150 for District Council member candidate and $200 for mayoral candidate, rounding up to the nearest dollar.
• There are four steps of investigation of a complaint: 1) Preliminary Review 2) Evaluation of Complaint 3) Investigation of Complaint 4) Refer to Municipal Court.

Updates on Workplan and Election

The Committee’s priorities

1. campaign finance enforcement
2. campaign contributions
3. code changes to eliminate write-in candidates
4. redistricting
5. charter changes
6. reading petitions
7. education on ranked choice voting
8. additional charter amendments and
9. “bike rack topics”.

• The timeline of when a write-in candidate is required to file may change.
• Discussed when to amend precinct boundaries.
• Discussed eliminating the provision that circulators must read a petition when requested to sign.
• The Fort Collins City Clerk and Assistant City Attorney visited Boulder County Elections office to learn more about IRV/RCV.
• Boulder County began their education outreach to the community in April prior to the first RCV election.
• The Boulder team plans to visit Larimer County Elections office in December 2024.

Issues related to proposed 2D charter amendments on the 2024 ballot

The city made a clerical error when the wrong document was uploaded and approved during the second reading of the amendment. If the amendment passes, the City will address how to correct the incorrect timeline of collecting signatures. A revised notice has been issued by the City and has been sent to the Coloradoan local news outlet.

Members of the city’s Election Code Committee are Mayor Jeni Arndt, Julie Pignataro, Tricia Canonico, Melanie Potyondy (Alternate)

The Fort Collins Election Code Committee meets monthly. Next meeting Tuesday, Dec. 10 at 4 p.m. Visit https://www.fcgov.com/council/election-code-committee for meeting times, agenda and approved minutes.

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*Citizen Observers further the commitment of the League of Women Voters to its principle of Citizens Right to Know, however, we are not acting as journalists. Omissions and errors are possible. It is assumed that users of this information are responsible for their own fact-checking. This could include contacting a government clerk, conversing with an elected official or staff, and/or asking us to speak to the Observer who attended.