The Colorado State Open Thread tries to be published every Monday at 7PM. Sometimes it’s a little late. Sometimes it’s seven days late. You can help avoid that kind of tragedy by contributing your own column to the Open Thread at least 10 minutes in advance of the publish date and time. We look forward to your writing!
Some notes about Colorado’s politics:
Over 200K signatures were submitted to try and have a ballot measure about changing how Colorado allocates the electoral votes. This past spring the legislature chose to allocate them based on the national vote winner, provided that enough states decide to do that so that a majority would allocate their votes that way. So far, not enough states have chosen to do that, but Colorado was going to add our nine electoral votes to the national popular vote winner in what may be the wave of the future.
In keeping with the idea that anything new is horrifying and a shock to the system that must be avoided (except new and more deadly firearms), the Republicans (the only party to have benefited from losing the popular vote and still winning the votes that truly mattered (George W. Bush winning the Supreme Court in 2000 and Trump winning the Russian Sweepstakes in 2016)), well, they have managed to scare enough sheeple into signing on to these petitions to try and make this a ballot issue rather than something for the legislature to decide. We’ll know in 30 days or so if Republicans did this legally or not, but they only needed about 128K signatures so I think we’ll be seeing this on the ballot.
Normally I like ballot measures, since things like legalizing Marijuana and Denver’s green roof measure would never have passed the legislature or city council, and even though the Colorado Healthcare Initiative lost badly at the polls, the measure would never have even been voted on in the legislature either. Yes, things like Tabor have badly hurt Colorado, but I think generally the people have been ahead of the legislature more often than they’ve been a hindrance. That said, I have to hope that this fails because I have decided for myself that the Electoral College system, which is quaint and could be nice, has hurt more than it has helped and that will likely remain the case for as long as it takes someone to hijack the national vote. So I will be voting to cast our votes with the national winner.
On another note, there’s a vote that just ended (I haven’t heard the results yet) about changing the name of the Stapleton neighborhood and a second measure would be about a special assessment to fund that change. Why change the name? Because it was named, ultimately, after a former Denver mayor who was a proud member of the KKK. The rundown on the history is here. The votes had to be returned by last Wednesday. Points are raised both for and against. I’m personally rather ambivalent, not being a resident of Denver anymore. I tend to think that the people who are directly affected should be the ones voting, but I’m a hypocrite because I contribute to races outside of the jurisdictions where I get to vote (Ditch Mitch!!!), but I’m comfortable with some of my hypocriticism. If the people of Stapleton want to live in a community named after a leader of the KKK in Denver and Colorado, let them live with their votes. If I did have a vote, I’d vote to change it, and then I’d work to get a name I like, but since I don’t live there, I’ll read about their decision and probably not let it affect me either way. I doubt I would boycott the area simply because I have no reason to visit there anyway.
Anyway, I’ll leave you with a photo from Estes Park, since it’s getting closer to the elk rut season and ElkFest is approaching. Y’all come up to Estes Park, enjoy the Elk, shop like crazy, and then go home, OK?
Look at the bull (male) elk lying next to this car. His antlers are still growing! When he stood up, his legs were as tall as the solid section of the car doors.What is on your minds? The floor is open.