Colorado has become a national leader in democratic innovation through its sustained and creative use of Quadratic Voting (QV). Unlike traditional voting systems that capture only which option voters prefer, QV also captures how strongly they feel about their choices. This innovation has allowed lawmakers, agencies, and stakeholders to break through political gridlock, allocate scarce resources more effectively, and prioritize issues in ways that reflect both breadth and intensity of support.

At the same time, the Web3 ecosystem has embraced QV as a governance tool for decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and token-based communities. Just as Colorado has used QV to resolve policy disputes and allocate budgets, Web3 projects are using it to balance influence among participants and fund public goods in a way that resists capture by wealthy insiders.

What Is Quadratic Voting?

Traditional democratic processes rely on a one-person-one-vote system. While simple, that approach often masks the strength of people’s preferences: a voter who feels passionately about an issue has no more influence than someone who barely cares.

Quadratic Voting addresses this by giving participants a fixed number of voice credits to allocate across multiple issues. The cost of each additional vote on the same issue increases quadratically: one vote might cost 1 credit, two votes cost 4 credits, three votes cost 9 credits, and so on.

This ensures that participants can express intensity by spending more credits on issues they care about most, but prevents any one individual from dominating without exhausting their limited credit budget. The result is a decision-making process that balances majority sentiment with minority intensity, producing outcomes that are more nuanced and representative of real-world preferences.

Colorado’s QV Timeline

2019 Pilot – Colorado’s House Democratic Caucus partnered with RadicalxChange and Democracy Earth to allocate funds using QV ballots, breaking through legislative stalemates.

2020 Executive Branch Adoption – The Governor’s Office of Operations brought QV into annual goal-setting, with agencies like Higher Education and Behavioral Health using it for funding and reform priorities.

2021 Legislative Integration – Both chambers began using a purpose-built QV web interface to allocate slices of a $50 million budget across 80+ bills.

2022 Bipartisan Expansion – Senate Republicans joined Democrats in using QV, proving it could foster cooperation across political divides.

2023 Continued Use – Lawmakers relied again on enhanced QV software for appropriations, confirming it as a durable tool for high-stakes decision-making.

Web3 Models: QV in Action

Colorado’s leadership is mirrored in Web3, where DAOs and blockchain projects are testing QV to solve governance challenges:

• Flow State: Flow State built a continuous implementation of quadratic funding. It uses programmable money streams to enable dynamic, open-ended community funding allocation.
  
  

• clr.fund: A community-led protocol that allocates funds to public goods using quadratic methods. It allows participants to direct resources in a way that reflects intensity of support, not just raw capital. clr.fund
  
  

• Optimism Collective: Experimented with quadratic approaches in its Retroactive Public Goods Funding, where contributors are rewarded based on community impact. QV helped avoid concentration of influence and encouraged participation across the ecosystem. Optimism Governance
  
  

• Proof of Humanity DAO & RadicalxChange collaborations: These groups have explored QV as a way to govern decentralized identity and resource allocation, echoing the same principles that Colorado applied to public budgeting.

These experiments demonstrate that QV is not just a tool for legislatures — it is becoming a cornerstone of decentralized governance in blockchain networks.

Media Coverage & Broader Significance

Colorado’s bold use of QV has been covered by outlets including Wired, Bloomberg, and Colorado Politics, which praised it as a rare real-world laboratory for democratic tools. Similarly, Web3 governance forums and think tanks like RadicalxChange have elevated QV as a way to make token-based governance more equitable.

Beyond legislatures and DAOs, QV has applications in corporate boards, nonprofit budgeting, and community decision-making. Its ability to measure not just choice but intensity makes it especially powerful where trade-offs are complex and resources limited.

Learn More

• RadicalxChange Wiki: Colorado’s QV Experiments

• Quadratic Voting in Colorado: 2020 Blog Post

• Colorado Legislature QV Polling Coverage