A ballot drop box is seen outside the downtown office of the Denver Elections Division on June 28, 2022. (Quentin Young/Colorado Newsline).Mail back voting is underway. Drop boxes open Monday. The state’s 14 ballot propositions could dramatically change the tax architecture and increase spending on education and conservation. Equally important, ten initiatives, mostly of conservative origin, are what I called “an alternative governing model using the ballot initiative process” (Axios).
In a John Frank writeup on the big election fights in Wednesday’s Axios, I point out that Advance Colorado has created “a powerful counter to the Democratic Legislature and the general liberal cultural zeitgeist.”
The director of the organization, Michael Field, has the influence of the TABOR movement of the 1990s but without the difficult and unpleasant Doug Bruce and his statewide network of volunteers. Field uses money and think tank research to access the ballot. In some cases, the threat of going to the ballot puts him, his perspective and interest group funders at the legislative table and in the governor’s office.
