The ses­sion that end­ed recent­ly in the Col­orado Gen­er­al Assem­bly was ​“a hot, noisy spec­ta­cle peo­ple aren’t like­ly to see again for some time,” as the Den­ver Post described it. It was also star­tling­ly pro­duc­tive. The Assem­bly enact­ed some of the most restric­tive gun con­trol laws in the nation. It approved same-sex civ­il unions. It cre­at­ed the nation’s first reg­u­la­to­ry sys­tem for mar­i­jua­na, which Col­orado vot­ers legal­ized in a bal­lot ini­tia­tive last fall. And it passed leg­is­la­tion that gives undoc­u­ment­ed stu­dents the in-state tuition rate at state universities.

Colorado is just one of seven states that expanded access to registration and voting in the past legislative year.

And in ear­ly May, just before the ses­sion end­ed, it passed leg­is­la­tion that insti­tutes both elec­tion-day reg­is­tra­tion and ​“portable” reg­is­tra­tion, which means that vot­ers remain on the rolls even after they move to a new address. It cre­ates a com­mis­sion to study and sug­gest more reforms to Colorado’s vot­ing sys­tem. And it expands vot­ing by mail, requir­ing that mail-in bal­lots be sent to every vot­er in the state. Near­ly three-fourths of Col­orado vot­ers took advan­tage of mail-in vot­ing in last fall’s election.

Col­orado is just one of sev­en states that expand­ed access to reg­is­tra­tion and vot­ing in the past leg­isla­tive year. Mary­land intro­duced same-day reg­is­tra­tion for ear­ly vot­ers, for exam­ple, and Vir­ginia and West Vir­ginia ini­ti­at­ed online vot­er registration.

But it’s the com­bi­na­tion of exten­sive reform and col­lab­o­ra­tive endeav­or that makes Col­orado stand out. Though about 70 per­cent of the state’s coun­ty clerks are Repub­li­can office­hold­ers, three-fourths of them sup­port­ed the reform bill. Their rea­sons were large­ly prag­mat­ic. The mail-in vot­ing sys­tem (which the bill expands) requires less equip­ment, staff and vol­un­teers than in-per­son vot­ing, mean­ing that it’s cheap­er and eas­i­er to administer.

Colorado’s elec­tion reforms come at a time when the push to restrict vot­ing access is los­ing some momen­tum, while the counter-move­ment to increase access has gained some strength. As of ear­ly May, accord­ing to the Bren­nan Cen­ter for Jus­tice, 30 bills that would expand access to reg­is­tra­tion and vot­ing were active in 16 state leg­is­la­tures, more than dou­ble the num­ber of bills — 14 — to restrict vot­er access that were active in eight states.

In late June, the Supreme Court will rule on a case from Alaba­ma, and that ver­dict could deliv­er a blow to the momen­tum for broad­er access. If con­ser­v­a­tive argu­ments pre­vail, the court will over­turn Sec­tion 5 of the Vot­ing Rights Act, which requires that states, coun­ties and cities with a his­to­ry of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion get ​“pre-clear­ance” from the U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice before chang­ing their vot­ing laws. That oblig­a­tion has helped to block vot­er sup­pres­sion tac­tics by the GOP, such as impos­ing unrea­son­able lim­its on vot­ing days and hours, and its repeal would almost cer­tain­ly result in a resur­gence of such efforts in the South.

In Col­orado, it’s not clear whether the vic­to­ry for vot­ing access will trans­late into broad­er bipar­ti­san efforts. The coop­er­a­tion between Democ­rats and GOP coun­ty clerks didn’t extend to Repub­li­can law­mak­ers, who vot­ed almost uni­form­ly against the reforms, offer­ing the stan­dard bogus objec­tions fre­quent­ly used to restrict vot­ing access. Kevin Lund­berg, a Col­orado state sen­a­tor, said the bill should be named the ​“Same Day Vot­er Fraud Act” because of its pro­vi­sion for same-day vot­er registration.

On the oth­er hand, Colorado’s slow left­ward drift over the past years might bode well for a new era of expand­ed vot­ing access nation­al­ly. Col­orado has been the sub­ject of much strate­giz­ing and hand­wring­ing on the part of con­ser­v­a­tives, who’ve watched with hor­ror its meta­mor­pho­sis into a reli­ably blue state. A 2008 essay by Fred Barnes in the con­ser­v­a­tive Week­ly Stan­dard summed up their angst: ​“The Demo­c­ra­t­ic surge in Col­orado reflects the nation­al trend, but it involves a great deal more. There’s some­thing unique going on in Col­orado that, if copied in oth­er states, has the poten­tial to pro­duce sweep­ing gains nation­wide. That some­thing is the ​‘Col­orado Mod­el.’ ” Two Week­ly Stan­dard authors described the mod­el in a fol­low-up to Barnes’ piece: ​“In a nut­shell, [it’s] about infra­struc­ture. … Col­orado pro­gres­sives rec­og­nized the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty could no longer raise enough mon­ey to fund the kind of orga­ni­za­tion nec­es­sary to sus­tain a long-term polit­i­cal move­ment. So with back­ing from a hand­ful of large donors, they built a net­work of spe­cial­ized, coor­di­nat­ed non­prof­its to fill the void. The results were stun­ning” — i.e., a Demo­c­ra­t­ic takeover of the state’s pol­i­tics. The key to the model’s suc­cess, accord­ing to Barnes, is the syn­er­gy among Col­orado-based non­prof­its that divide up the labor while work­ing togeth­er close­ly toward one over­ar­ch­ing goal. The col­lab­o­ra­tors include state-based think tanks, a Col­orado ver­sion of the media-watch orga­ni­za­tion Media Mat­ters, an online pro­gres­sive news­pa­per and a pub­lic-inter­est law firm. There’s even a school: the Cen­ter for Pro­gres­sive Lead­er­ship Col­orado (an orga­ni­za­tion that also has branch­es in Ari­zona, Michi­gan and Wisconsin).

But does the ​“net­work of spe­cial­ized, coor­di­nat­ed non­prof­its” that is pre­sum­ably the heart of the mod­el — and thus key to pro­gres­sives’ for­tunes — have the orga­niz­ing mus­cle and poten­tial for nation­al rel­e­vance that con­ser­v­a­tives believe? Whether the elec­tion reforms in Col­orado are a blip or a bell­wether depend in large part on how that ques­tion is resolved nation­wide over the next few years.

In the mean­time, ​“Col­orado just got itself a 21st cen­tu­ry, inclu­sive elec­tions sys­tem,” as New Era Col­orado Foun­da­tion, one of the non­prof­its that worked for reform, put it. ​“Colorado’s emerg­ing from this ses­sion as a more equi­table state, a stronger democ­ra­cy, and an all-around more badass place to live.”