I have some interesting choices to make regarding the Colorado ballot this year.

Amendment 69 is to set up universal health for Colorado residents. While I support the concept, the wording of the amendment is such that there isn’t a lot a flexibility setting things up and tweaking parts to make it workable. So I will have to vote NO this time around. I think it would be better to set up a referendum to order the State legislature to implement a universal health care program so the details could be addressed properly.

Amendment 71 is an amendment to amend the amendment process in Colorado. It currently requires 5% of the number of voters who voted for the Secretary of State in the sate of Colorado to get an amendment on the ballot. This would change that to require at least 2% of the voters in each State legislative district to get an amendment on the ballot. I can see in principle that this helps distribute the amendment process across the state and stops the larger urban areas from dominating the amendment process, but, to require all 35 districts to sign up to get the amendment on the ballot seems too restrictive. I would approve if 2/3 of the districts were on board with an amendment, 100% seems a bit unrealistic.

And there are two propositions to set up party primaries that are open to unaffiliated voters. This doesn’t seem right. Colorado political parties currently use caucuses to select their slates.  You have to be a registered member of the party to caucus with them. And the parties are supposed to pay for the caucuses themselves. The primaries are for the parties to select their slates under the auspices of state and county funding. Why do you want to allow people who are not affiliated with the party to be involved with the selection of the party’s candidates? And why should the state be funding the activities of private organizations? Proposition 107 covers the presidential primary. Proposition 108 is for non-presidential primaries and  does allow the party to opt-out of the open primary.

Some choices to make. All the other amendments and propositions look good – Minimum Wage hikes, Tobacco taxes, Medical aid-in-dying.

In Colorado we have 22 parties vying for the presidency on the ballot and another 6 that are registered write-ins. So there are a lot of choices. The annoying part of all those parties running for President, though, is that very few to none are putting up candidates for any other offices at the local, state, or federal level.  (The Senate race has 7 candidates/1 write-in, and the District 5 Representative race has 3 candidates/1 write-in.) You have to dig deep to find those write-ins.

Tomorrow I vote.