Hillary Clinton is taking her campaign Wednesday to Pueblo, Colorado, a heavily Latino, working-class town once known for its steel industry.
“At a public voter registration event, Clinton will lay out the high stakes of this election for Coloradans as well as her vision for an America that is stronger together, with an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top,” says the statement from her Colorado campaign. “Clinton will also urge supporters to make sure they’re registered to vote. Colorado has the highest percentage of registered voters of any state in the country and voters can visit iwillvote.com to check their registration status.”
This will be the first Colorado campaign stop for Clinton since early August. Her campaign has also cut down on advertising in this purple swing state in the lead-up to the Nov. 8 election. In Colorado, ballots start going out to voters in the mail Oct. 17.
And look at that, Hillary Clinton is doing an event in Pueblo Weds. I guess we still matter. #copolitics
— Nick Riccardi (@NickRiccardi) October 10, 2016
Clinton’s choice of Pueblo, which lies about two hours south of Denver, comes a week after her Republican rival Donald Trump held a rally downtown. Political experts have called Pueblo one of the top 50 swing counties in the country.
That Clinton is focusing on voter registration makes sense. While polls have been volatile in Colorado, Democrats have been snapping up voters in the past few months.
As of the first of this month, Colorado had more registered Democratic voters than Republicans for the first time in 30 years.
This year will also be the first time Colorado voters will cast a presidential ballot by mail.
Related: Colorado’s first all-mail presidential election: Vote early and they’ll leave you alone
The all-mail voting system ranks registered voters in Colorado into two categories: Active and inactive.
“Active” voters are registered voters who have an address that the Secretary of State’s office can confirm with a mailing. “Inactive” voters include voters who don’t appear to live at the address the state has on record. Both are eligible to vote, but the Secretary of State’s office cannot send a ballot to an inactive voter because officials know the address is wrong and ballots cannot be forwarded.
Within the past three months alone, Democrats have overtaken Republicans in both active and inactive categories.
As of Oct. 1, there were 1,171,067 registered active and inactive Democrats versus 1,147,064 Republicans — a difference of slightly more than 24,000. Colorado’s largest voting bloc is still unaffiliated voters, who number 1.2 million.
Related: Are you one of Colorado’s half million inactive voters? Here’s how to find out.
Says Clinton’s Colorado campaign about the Democratic nominee’s Wednesday visit: “Clinton will remind voters that ballots will be mailed beginning October 17 and urge them to return their ballots early.”
Members of the public interested in attending can learn more here.
Photo by Gage Skidmore for Creative Commons in Flickr.
