I'm leaning towards "No" on everything. I'm a little undecided on the assisted-suicide question (I'm a big fan of private individuals making private choices about crap like that, usually)  but I think I can plant myself on the opposite side from George Soros without any more thought, and keep a clean conscience.

I'm definitely "no" on the minimum wage hike and the government healthcare takeover and all of the tax increases (including Westminster 2A: I love you guys, WFD, but if you need more money you should have told the city to tell the Westminster Mall to redevelop its own goddamn self.)

I'm actually almost back and forth on "Raise the Bar" or "Rig the Bar." On the one hand, 71 might make it harder for the libs to undo TABOR (which along with Make My Day was what made me move here). On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that I can always put myself on the opposite side of everything from Roy Roemer, Bill Ritter, and John Hickenloser, and on the same side as Jon Caldara and the Independence Institute, with a clean conscience without having to put any more thought into it.

While I'm thinking about it, if anybody's got any opinions about the judges in Adams County...

No on single payer.

 
No on Tobacco tax increase.

No on minimum wage.

http://clearthebenchcolorado.org

I'm yes on 71.

No on pretty much everything else.

No on all of them here.

I haven't seen sh*t on anything down here in SO CO.

Consider yourself fortunate.  There's at least one local tax hike here being pushed by some rent seekers with children.  I'm going to tell the one neighbor to sell his nice camper and donate the proceeds if he thinks his kids' school needs more $$$.  Yeah, I'm that cranky (almost) old guy.

I don't know what's local in Colorado Springs, probably another tax increase. :/

But I am thinking about voting "no" on everything.

I guess I'm curious: what brought you to "yes" on that?

I don't think the little blue booklet has hit mailboxes yet, all I have is the full-page state booklet.

Came here to make a thread about my choices, I see you gents are already on top of it

Regarding this link, do they advocate voting NO on ALL judges on the ballot?

I did a little searching and found the Republican appointees.  Should I vote NO against these as well?:

APPEALS:
Bernard
Furman
Hawthorne
Jones
Roman
Terry

DISTRICT (17th district anyway):
Delgado
Goodbee
Murphy
Straus


Regarding the Amendments, here's a brief description of each of them for anyone wondering. Please criticize my choices:

T; removal of involuntary servitude for incarcerated persons: No

U; tax elimination for possessory interests < $6000: Yes

69; Coloradocare: No

70; Min. wage hike: No

71; Make amending constitution more difficult: YesNo

72; Tobacco tax increase: No

106; Voluntary suicide for terminally ill patients: Yes

107/108; Open primaries: ??? <-- unsure on this one, what are your thoughts?

My own opinions:

No on 69: duh.

No on 70: duh. You make the minimum wage $12/hr and you've just priced everybody who only provides $11.99/hour to his employer, out of a job.

71 is going to make it harder for the rabble to change state law without the benevolence of their elected representatives, who are wise and good and only want the best for us. I'm not opposed to a supermajority requirement for constitutional amendments. My big problem with 71 is requiring separate petitioning in each senate district, which means that each amendment is 35 separate court battles to certify or reject the petitions. Nobody besides the Gang of Four can afford that.

I think 71 is frankly an attack on TABOR. "Every living Colorado governor supports 71" and if Ritter, Roemer, and Hickenloser all support something then I'm 95% convinced it's bad just based upon that. Not only that, but I think the public needs to retain a (relatively) easy way to shove things down the legislature's throat.

No on 72: I don't think tax and spending prescriptions belong in the constitution, and I don't believe in sin taxes. IMHO, the only legitimate reason for a tax is to raise revenue to fund the few things that government has any business doing, and to raise it in the least-destructive way possible.

Neutral on 106: On the one hand I'm kind of supportive, but so is Soros and any time I find myself on the same side of an isue as that kapo piece of shit, I have to check myself.

107/108 mandate open primaries. I think the parties should control their own candidate-selection processes and set their own standards for participation, so I'm "no" on both. The current requirement of having been registered as a party member 30 days prior to that party's primary or caucus is not, IMHO, onerous or a bad thing. It's actually a really minimal standard and only a burden on "Operation Chaos" people or the people who are too lazy or flaky to google "Colorado republican caucus" and "register to vote Colorado" and read the first link or two.

I think I'm "yes" on T and U (both just housekeeping, IMHO: we don't have involuntary servitude for criminal sentences anymore anyway, and IMHO it's dumb to spend $1000 of taxpayer money to collect $50 in property taxes).

As for judges:

I don't have enough free time to read every damn case that a judge touches, so I've found a few "litmus test" cases that I apply to all of the appellate judges: how they ruled when Ritter tried to claim that his new car tax was a "fee" not subject to TABOR, how they ruled when CU tried to exempt itself from CCW licenses being valid "in all areas of the state," and how they ruled when the courts staged their little power grab and took over congressional redistricting because they didn't like how the legislature was doing it. I haven't had a chance to check out the ones on this ballot, and it doesn't look to me like Clear the Bench has been updated in a few years.

I don't know much about the trial judges here in the 17th. I'll probably vote "fire him" out of spite on all.

The only other ballot question I know anything about is Westminster 2A. I'm "no" because I'm opposed to government-sector unions, period. This one smells like a camel's nose under a tent, with every other city employee about to sneak in behind the camel.

Well, and SCFD 4-whatever, and "no." I'm not voting for tax-supported museums and zoos. Zoos killed Harambe so piss on those guys.

Interesting insights OP. I leaned toward yes on 71 because of the bipartisan support. I will think on what you said.

Also had no idea Soros was for the voluntary suicide bit. Is this a case of a broken clock being right, or is there something more sinister at work here?

Read into it a little more,  I'll vote no.

71 helps rural communities from being ran over by Denver or major cities.  If they can't get support from rural communities, it doesnt go to vote.

This keeps Bloomberg special intrest groups from trolling 16th street for signatures to get something on the ballot and pushed through.

Thanks for the insights guys.  I still haven't seen sh*t here.

But doesn't bloomberg have the cash to send his dumbasses to all the rural areas? If some small west slope group has a good idea. can they get it out to Sterling and Lamar? I might be changing my mind on this one.



 

Bloomberg dumped a lot of money in Las Animas for some woman who was running for office. She lost.

Sure, but they have to mobilize voters to all districts (which isnt very feasible) or try to con enough people to get 2% of the vote.  Right now they have the 16th street mall easy button with paid kids asking people for signatures.  Sure it is more difficult to ammend the CO constitution for positive things, but that should be easy to get the required votes from all districts if the amendment is worth a damn.

Why give Bloomberg the easy button as it stands right now?

Sure, make me think harder! My head hurts now. Going to do some more reading before I vote on any of this stuff this year.

 

My current thoughts:

T; removal of involuntary servitude for incarcerated persons: No

U; tax elimination for possessory interests < $6000: ??

69; Coloradocare: No

70; Min. wage hike: No

71; Make amending constitution more difficult:No

72; Tobacco tax increase: No

106; Voluntary suicide for terminally ill patients: Yes

107/108; Open primaries: ??? <-- unsure on this one, what are your thoughts?

When someone has a lease that lets him use public land, he has a possessory interest: it's not ownership but he does own a right to possess that property and do something with it. As it stands, he's liable for property taxes based upon the value of his interest. Amendment U would exempt him if the value of his interest is under $6000. I'm voting "no" because I don't think it makes any sense to spend five hundred bucks of the county assessor's time and effort to collect fifty bucks worth of taxes. Or whatever the actual numbers are.


I'm voting "no" on both. I think the parties should control their own candidate selections. I also don't believe in open primaries in general: letting Democrats be involved in picking our candidates, IMHO, played a big role in the absolute shit show that was the 2010 governor's election.

Also, as I read 108, it looks to me like it allows a party to dispense entirely with both primaries and caucuses, and have its own central committee selecting candidates. To be fair, I think I was drinking when I read it.

Just got my mail/drop ballot today. I need to do some reading. Have one choice picked tho.

Whatever you choose folks, just show up.

Excellent point. Cool for me, I have a polling location blocks from my house. I fill it out, and can drop at said location.

 

More useful information to keep some of us out of trouble.

http://kdvr.com/2016/10/20/taking-selfies-of-completed-ballots-a-misdemeanor-in-colorado/

Where is the best place to look for info on all these judges? Clear the bench looks real outdated.

I haven't found a good source on everything, so I'm just going to do some of it and throw it into this thread.

Starting with Hood on the Supreme Court...

The first case I found...
Nelson was wrongfully convicted of a crime. He got his conviction overturned. In most states, it's relatively easy for a defendant to get his fines and court costs refunded if his conviction is overturned. Colorado makes it much harder than the average. The Supreme Court of Colorado ruled that Nelson wasn't automatically entitled to a refund. Hood dissented, and his dissent included:

That being said, Hood was on the Denver District Court in 2011 and had the redistricting case. In theory, according to the Colorado Constitution, drawing new boundaries after each census is the legislature's job. Hood ended up picking a map that, long story short, seemed designed to create another safe Democratic district, because he wasn't happy with what the legislature did.

It doesn't help that it appeared to me that Hood was selected by Hickenloser as a way to have another anti-school-choice justice the next time that came up.

Just based upon that one thing alone I'm ready to say "no" and "fuck that guy."

I do the same but am going to look around a little first this time. Don't want to say no on the one that might deserve to stay.



 

As a rule, I vote "NO" on everything until I have enough evidence to vote "YES".   We have too many laws already.....

Nothing in my mailbox as of 5pm today

Can anyone explain ballot issue 2A Town of Castle Rock....it's the last thing I have to answer and google isn't any help. What happens to the money if I vote no?

I cant find anything to help either. Did you get the blue book?

What I found


What that means is, the TABOR amendment to the state constitution allows a city to keep whatever revenue it had in its budget last year, plus inflation (measured as the Denver-Boulder Consumer Price Index IIRC) plus population growth, and requires the city to refund the rest to the taxpayers. A city can keep the excess but needs to get permission from the taxpayers.

So, if 2A passes, the city keeps the money. If it fails, the city's taxpayers get that money back.

I would vote "no" on that, if only because of the lack of comments in the blue book. Even the measure's proponent didn't think it was worth explaining why they wanted to keep the money. If I were a CR voter I'd probably be a little insulted.

Thanks guys! Ya, I got the blue book but honestly didn't open it.....I thought I'd have better luck with Google. Man, reading all of the proposals made me feel stupid/reading another language/someone is trying to pull a fast one. I guess I'll select no just like all the other ones.

Thoughts on Prop U?

Back and forth.

On the one hand I hate "except in THIS case" policies and especially in the constitution.

On the other hand, I really think it's dumb to spend more on collecting a tax, than the amount to be collected.

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