Colorado: Joe Miklosi

You use it to go shoe shopping in your bare feet. You use it to book your vacation while at work.

Why not also use the Internet to register to vote?

You just might be able to, under a bill chugging through the state legislature.

House bill 1160 would allow people to register to vote, request a mail-in ballot or change their voting address online through what bill proponents say will be a highly secure website run by the Colorado secretary of state's office. The bill would not allow people to cast votes online.

The bill won final approval, with broad bipartisan support, in the state House on Monday and next faces at least three votes in the state Senate.

About 150 people rallied on the West steps before heading inside the Capitol to find their assigned lawmakers and talk to them about bill, which is awaiting a vote in the Senate. The group of citizen lobbyists included mothers, high school students and activists.

Among them was Yamili, an 18-year-old high school student from Denver who said she doesn't qualify for in-state tuition because she came to the United States illegally with her parents about 10 years ago from Mexico. Yamili, who didn't give her last name because of her immigration status, said she has been accepted to private Regis University with a $12,000 scholarship but is applying for other scholarships to help her pay the tuition, which will be about $30,000 next year.

Paper or plastic?

A Senate committee Wednesday night voted 4-3 for a bill that would ban plastic bags in large retail stores within three years.

Critics complained that the bill would drive consumers to paper bags, which cause their own set of environmental problems. But supporters said the idea was to get customers to use some sort of reusable bag.

"I can remember my grandmother taking her cloth bags to the grocery store," said Sen. Lois Tochtrop, D-Thornton. "It wasn't called recycling. It was called economics."

Sen. Shawn Mitchell, of Broomfield, joined the other two Republicans on the Senate Business, Labor & Technology Committee in voting against Senate Bill 156.

Coloradans may be able to vote on a November ballot initiative that combines the current push for job creation with the renewable-energy focus of the past two years.

Rep. Joe Miklosi, D-Denver, will introduce a ballot measure this week seeking voter permission to sell $2 billion in bonds to fund renewable-energy system installation or energy-efficiency upgrades on about 133,000 homes. It will be the first proposed referred measure introduced in 2009.

Under the freshman legislator's plan, residents could apply for loans of as much as $15,000 to install solar, wind or geothermal renewable energy systems or energy- efficiency improvements. They could repay the loans in installments of between 10 and 30 years.