The boldest attack on the Denver Paid Sick Leave Voter Initiative isn’t from the Chamber of Commerce. With large majorities supporting the November 2011 ballot measure, opponents know they have to do more than simply argue against the common sense notion that people shouldn’t go to work sick.   They need to find other ways to attack the measure which would require employers to provide nine days of paid sick leave per year for full time workers. Part time workers and employees of small businesses would have fewer days.

That’s why Scott Gessler, Colorado’s Republican Secretary of State, is suing the city of Denver to prevent the City Clerk’s office from mailing ballots to voters who didn’t cast ballots in the last election. In the November 2010 election conservatives turned out in higher numbers but expanded opportunities to vote by mail in Colorado actually helped increase turnout for both parties in the 2010 primary election over typical off-year primary elections.  If Gessler wins his lawsuit, it will reverse those trends and many voters – particularly young, low-income and minority voters – would be disenfranchised, unable to vote for the sick leave measure.

Today, over 100,000 Denver employees – 40 percent of all workers and 72% of food service workers –  have no paid sick days at their workplace.  These workers, when sick, are faced with a choice: stay home and lose a day of pay or go to work. A recent survey found that nearly three out of every four workers (72%) go to work sick.  Another study found that two thirds of restaurant workers go to work while sick, risking spreading illness ever further.

Opponents regularly attack laws that protect our health and help workers balance the oftentimes competing demands of work and family as “job killing” regulations that will destroy the economy.  Although these arguments are often misguided and wrong, at least conservative opponents are trying to use persuasion to win their case.   Now, however, they’ve resorted to prevention -- not again illness, but against voting.

Gessler’s voter suppression gambit is part of a conservativenation-wide effort led by Republican-controlled legislatures to make it more difficult to vote.