"Democracy requires creativity," López says. "It may just be one vote, but some of these races are really close. It is important to be able to settle your differences over a cold one. So we're encouraging people to vote and have a beer."
iVOTA! beer, to be precise. Denver first brewed up the ¡VOTA! campaign in 2020, after Jose Beteta, owner of Raíces Brewing at 2060 West Colfax Avenue, approached López with the idea of making a beer that would remind people of the importance of voting. Beteta came to the U.S. from Costa Rica and couldn't vote for 27 years because he was an undocumented immigrant.
"I know how easy it is to take this kind of right for granted," Beteta says. "All of those years I saw elections go by and people with the ability to do so. It hit me, like, 'You can do it, I can't, I wish I could!' It was kind of personal. I don't care who they vote for, but it's just a matter of getting out there and doing it, because if you don't do it, someone is out there making decisions for you."
The City of Denver will mail out this year's ballot on October 11, and it's going to be six pages long, López notes, with local ballot questions on whether to raise city sales taxes to support affordable housing, whether to ban slaughterhouses and more. There are fourteen statewide measures, too. And of course, this year is also a presidential election. All that calls for a beer — ideally, a ¡VOTA!
Not a single taxpayer penny goes to the project, López says; participating breweries charge $6 a glass to cover the cost of making the beer.
Raíces, which brewed seven barrels of ¡VOTA! this year, shares the recipe with other breweries that want to join the project. The American cream ale recipe he uses for the beer has "low overhead" for brewing, Beteta says, making it cheaper because it's a "simple" light beer.
¡VOTA! is limited to presidential election years, and López says he likes it that way. Raíces is selling the beer for the second time this year; Cervecería Colorado, 1635 Platte Street, is joining the project for the first time. Cheluna Brewing Company at Stanley Marketplace, 2501 Dallas Street in Aurora, is also considering selling the beer.
Denver usually sees about 86 percent of registered voters turn out on presidential election years, López says. While that's much more than the 10 to 40 percent turnout in other elections, he'd love to see the number go higher.
"I'm a guy of wishful thinking when it comes to this," he says. "I would love to see 100 percent turnout."
Turnout always depends on what's on the ballot and whether people are being encouraged to vote, he adds. "Are they being encouraged in the media, are they being encouraged at the door?" He encourages voting early by mail (make sure to mail that ballot by October 28).
Only about 1 percent of Denver voters vote in person, which is a sign of a "very easy voting model," notes López, who suggests making it easier by buying the four-pack of ¡VOTA! from Raíces Brewing, where they sell for $20, and then filling out the ballot with some friends over beers.
"You have mail-in ballots, you can bring it to your home, you can have a voting party. That's what we're encouraging people to do — have a beer together," López says. "Have a cold one, but don't let the ballot get blurry on you."
