DENVER — If you’re used to getting your ballot in the mail every election, you better keep an eye out for it when it comes time to vote. Because if you don’t vote, you won’t get a ballot when the next election rolls around. Unless you tell the county clerk to send one.

A new bipartisan bill at the state Capitol would change that. The bill, by Sen. Mike Johnston, D-Denver, and Rep. Don Coram, R-Montrose, would alter the system that requires voters who miss a vote to re-affirm their addresses with the county.

Under the terms of the bill, voters  would retain “active voter” status and receive mail ballots for at least two more cycles.

“There are around 300,000 voters who may have missed the last election in Colorado, whether they’re serving on active duty in Afghanistan, or they may have been hospitalized, or may have just chosen not to vote,” said Johnston during a floor debate Thursday.

“I don’t think it’s this body’s place to decide that someone that makes that decision is effectively dead until we resurrect them.”

Colorado Springs residents who didn’t send in a ballot for the general election in November 2010, for example, didn’t receive a mail ballot in the city election last May, when Mayor Steve Bach was voted in.

If you don’t vote, your status automatically changes from “active” to “inactive.” After the 2010 election, El Paso County Clerk Wayne Williams sent thousands of warning postcards to voters the following January, telling them if they didn’t update their status, they wouldn’t get a ballot.

But there aresome issues with the change Johnston has proposed. For one, said El Paso County Clerk spokeswoman Alissa Vander Veen, it would cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Ballots, she said, cost roughly $1 more per voter to send than the postcard registration reminders.

“We specifically say on them, if you do not return this card, you will not receive a ballot,” Vander Veen said. “You’ve got to be responsible for your registration.”

Vander Veen said the bill would probably cost the county $62,000 for the November election, since that’s how many inactive voters with mail-in registration there are in the county. (There’s a total of 150,000 inactive voters in El Paso County.)

The return rate in the past from inactive voters has been less than 10 percent, she said.

There are also security concerns, Vander Veen said, because if a voter moved ballots could received and used by someone else.

“It’s a complicated, horrible bill,” she said.

Johnston, however, said the measure would ultimately save counties money because it would require them to check the National Change of Address database with the U.S. Post Office before sending out ballots. Counties could save money by not having to send registration postcards after they pay to send ballots. He said Denver saved $26,000 last year by checking the NCOA database before mailing ballots.

Also, Johnston noted, counties are reimbursed 70 cents per active voter from the secretary of state, which helps cover costs.

But Rich Coolidge, communications director for Secretary of State Scott Gessler, said Johnston’s plan was flawed because clerks would have to keep sending ballots to voters at their registered for six years, or three general elections, at which point they’re purged from the voter rolls if ballots aren’t returned.

They already check the NCOA database and they send the lists to county clerks, who then send out the registration postcards before the election. But the secretary of state doesn’t rely on the NCOA database completely because the Post Office is less secure than the secretary of state’s office and the county clerks’ files, said Coolidge.

“We don’t find that to be a safe way of changing voting records,” Coolidge said.

Colorado Springs Senators Bill Cadman and Kent Lambert said they’re on the fence about the measure, and Lambert said he’s “leaning towards no,” but the measure passed the Senate on a voice vote. And since its House sponsor is a Republican, it has a decent chance of making it out alive from the lower chamber.

—Contact John Schroyer: 476-4825 Twitter @Johnschroyer Facebook Gazette John Schroyer

Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich poses with Chatfield High School sutdents (from left) Dylan Sorenson 15, Sage Dugas 16 and Bryce Kuschel 15 during a stop at Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers before turning himself in to the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Englewood just a few minutes away in Littleton. Photo by JOE AMON, THE DENVER POST