When does an outlet cross the line from news into propaganda? There are three major news outlets in Colorado currently testing that boundary. Despite the presence of some dedicated journalists doing good work, it’s increasingly evident that the three outlets in question serve primarily as mouthpieces for their owner’s politics, and only secondarily as vehicles for reporting the news.
With ballots landing in Colorado mailboxes this week, we are re-running Logan’s ballot initiative guide, which now includes a recommendation on ballot measure 7A, which will appear on Front Range ballots.
Ballots are officially in the mailstream and will be arriving in Colorado voters’ mailboxes over the next few days. As a helpful tip, you’ll probably be able to tell when your ballot arrives when you look through your front window and see your mailbox straining under the weight of what’s inside it: almost certainly the longest ballot Colorado has ever mailed.
Corporate giveaways, climate denialism, naked bigotry, and other bad ideas. By volume, those are the suggestions which will constitute the bulk of Colorado’s November ballot. As I’ve spent the last several weeks writing about, this year marks only the second time in state history that voters have had to contend with as many as 14 initiatives on a single ballot, and most of them are more a product of astroturf than grassroots.
When your ballot arrives in the mail in a few weeks, it will be the size of a phonebook. That’s due to the whopping 14 ballot initiatives which qualified for the November election, tying 2008 as the high water mark for Colorado’s initiative system. As I’ve spent the last several weeks rambling about, 8 of those 14 initiatives are sponsored by billionaire-backed conservative organization Advance Colorado, and every single one of those eight deserve a no vote.
Of the 14 initiatives appearing on Colorado’s November ballot, eight of them were created and sponsored by the billionaire-funded right-wing Advance Colorado organization, something I have written about at length. Over the last few weeks, in my quest to illuminate the ways in which wealthy donors are working to slant Colorado’s systems of politics and governance in favor of their profitable interests, I have looked at five of those initiatives: proposals to cap the corporate income tax rate, create a right to buy and sell natural gas, put a right to hunt and fish in the state constitution, restrict future ballot language to an 8th grade reading level, and add voter ID requirements to Colorado’s vote-by-mail system.
While most of the conservative-driven measures slated to appear on Colorado’s November ballot are designed to give tax money to billionaires, and a handful are designed to bully queer kids, two of them have a different purpose: to try and force structural changes to Colorado’s democracy which the initiatives’ backers seem to believe will benefit their interests. One seeks to mandate that ballot language be written to an “8th grade reading level,” and the other seeks to add voter identification requirements to Colorado’s vote-by-mail system. Both of the would-be alterations are sponsored by Advance Colorado.
To keep and bear arms. To be tried by a jury of one’s peers. To be secure against unlawful search and seizure. To party. The list of rights which are seen as universal and inalienable has been in flux since Locke and his contemporaries first hammered out the concept in the 17th and 18th centuries. This year, a number of ballot initiatives seek to make additions to Colorado’s own unique list of rights.
Colorado’s November ballot is almost finalized. As of today, ten initiatives are set to bulk up the ballots Coloradans will cast this fall. While those initiatives might look like unrelated efforts by groups of concerned citizens, in reality most of them have been sponsored and funded by billionaire-backed right-wing organization Advance Colorado, which specializes in using Colorado’s ballot process to change state laws in ways the Democratic-majority legislature would not. Soon, they will start the process of trying to trick voters into supporting them.
Representative Jennifer Bacon has something many elected officials would benefit from: a developed worldview, a theory of the case that guides her actions in office. It’s a worldview that developed some time between her childhood in south Florida and her arrival to the state House of Representatives in January 2021. Maybe it developed during her time at Tulane, when a Black dean told her that her grandfather didn’t take the train from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago just for her to flunk out of college; or when, years after taking that dean’s words to heart, she was told she should straighten her hair before taking the Virginia bar exam. Maybe the last few pieces of it fell into place when she won a seat on the Denver school board in 2017, and earned a front row seat to what systemic inequality really looks like.
