Plural Voting in the Colorado State Legislature
Partner/s
Colorado’s Democratic caucuses (House in 2019; later Senate and some Republican caucus use) and Colorado’s Governor’s Office of Operations and several agencies (executive-branch pilots).
Location
Denver, CO
Dates
2019—2023
Short description of the project
In Spring 2019, Colorado legislative caucuses ran a pilot of Plural Voting (PV) to prioritize dozens of competing appropriation requests. RadicalxChange helped design, implement and iterate the process and software; the method spread into repeated caucus polls and executive-branch working groups through 2023. The pilots produced clearer priority signals for leaders but later generated legal challenges about anonymous internal polling.
What problem did this project seek to address?
Legislative leaders faced dozens of appropriations requests but limited money and little reliable signal about which proposals colleagues prioritized. In 2018, before using PV, the Democratic Caucus used a different process where each representative simply received 15 votes to cast for the 15 bills that they felt deserved funding. That process generated what Representative Chris Hansen called a “big blob” of bills with roughly the same number of votes, and no clear preferences between them. By contrast, PV generated a clearly ordered list, showing which bills had the most support and how steeply the support declined as one proceeded down the list.
Who were the key audiences or communities of participants?
Primary users were caucus members (initially House Democrats, then also both Senate caucuses) and executive-branch agencies (e.g. the Department of Higher Education & the Behavioral Health Administration). Participation was internal (anonymous, non-binding polls) rather than public elections.
How does this support more democratic outcomes?
PV made it easy for the legislators to find common ground. It produced a more nuanced signal about which bills mattered most to members, enabling compromise and prioritization where binary votes could not.
How did RxC add value/support this experiment?
- Design & facilitation: RxC advised on when PV was a good fit, ran onboarding exercises, and provided process design.
- Software & tooling: RxC built a web app that let the legislators create ballots, administer unique links, and export results.
What were the outcomes or impacts?
Positive, practical impact
- Across five years of pilots, PV consistently produced clear prioritization signals that helped state leaders set their agenda and funding priorities.
Limitations
- Results were advisory and non-binding. Leaders sometimes overrode low-ranked items deemed critical, showing QV can be simply informational rather than determinative in many legislatures.
- Because many of the polls were run anonymously and used in caucus decision-making, a Denver judge ruled in January 2024 that they violated Colorado’s open-meetings law and ordered the practice to stop in its current form. This highlighted a crucial lesson in transparency for applying PV inside public bodies.
Are there any testimonials, documents, assets, links or other ways we can illustrate this project?
https://www.radicalxchange.org/wiki/colorado-qv/
https://www.radicalxchange.org/updates/blog/quadratic-voting-in-colorado-2020/
https://www.radicalxchange.org/updates/papers/The_Handbook_for_Radical_Local_Democracy.pdf
https://www.wired.com/story/colorado-quadratic-voting-experiment/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-01/a-new-way-of-voting-that-makes-zealotry-expensive
https://coloradosun.com/2019/05/28/quadratic-voting-colorado-house-budget/
https://coloradosun.com/2024/01/05/colorado-legisalture-quadratic-voting-lawsuit/