Initiative 177, brought forward by the conservative nonprofit , qualified for the ballot after proponents submitted the required number of signatures, according to the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office. The “right to natural gas” initiative will be on the Nov. 3 general election ballot.

Proponents needed to gather enough signatures from each state senate district to equal 2% of the total registered voters in those districts because the ballot initiative would change the Colorado Constitution. It also needed to meet the 124,238-signature threshold, the secretary of state’s office said in a Thursday news release.

In May, Democrats floated a bill that would establish guardrails for Initiative 177, anticipating that it would make the ballot and win approval from voters. But House leaders scuttled the bill at the last minute, saying it would not meaningfully change the impacts of any ballot measure.

Colorado is trying to move away from natural gas as a heating and cooking source in homes as the state tries to reduce its overall greenhouse gas emissions. Denver has also considered outlawing natural gas in homes after implementing new restrictions on its use in commercial buildings.

Burning natural gas produces nitrogen oxides, which are a key ingredient in ground-level ozone pollution. Those nitrogen oxides combine with volatile organic compounds on hot summer days, and the pollution contributes to climate change and harms human health.

The nine-county northern Front Range region — Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas, Jefferson, Larimer and Weld counties — has been out of compliance with federal ozone standards for 17 years.

Research has also shown that cooking with a gas stove in the kitchen can release as much benzene as second-hand cigarette smoke.

U.S. District Court Judge Philip A. Brimmer wrote that the voter rolls were not covered by the federal law that the Department of Justice was attempting to use to obtain them. He said accepting the Trump administration’s interpretation of that law would throw other election-related statutes into conflict.

He also pointed to other federal courts that have rejected such an argument; one of those other judges wrote that the federal government’s position would produce an “absurd result.”

Brimmer dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled.

The Justice Department filed the suit in December after repeatedly requesting copies of the voter rolls that would’ve included voters’ driver’s license numbers, birth dates and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers. The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office had provided the public version of the voter rolls, which withheld that personal information, but it declined to turn over the unredacted registry.

“Today’s victory affirms that Trump’s DOJ has no right to Coloradans’ sensitive voter information,” Secretary of State Jena Griswold said in a statement.

According to Griswold’s office, Colorado was one of at least 30 states sued by the federal government for refusing to turn over their unredacted voter rolls. Twenty of those lawsuits, including the one filed against Colorado, have already failed.

The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office said Wednesday that it had approved a resident¶¶Ňőap petition for abandonment — effectively transferring all town business and assets to Prowers County.

Hartman, a tiny community of 30 people in southeast Colorado, had been stuck in a legal limbo with no analog in recent state history since all of its elected officials resigned from their posts earlier this year. That occurred amid petty squabbles, fraud allegations and a physical altercation following a Board of Trustees meeting.

With no government, the town cannot hold elections or address a deepening crisis surrounding its water supply. The town has been on a boil order for the past year, and its water tower has been in need of serious repairs for years.

The imbroglio reached the state Capitol, where lawmakers in this year’s session passed a bill specifically written to address Hartman’s unique situation. That legislation, , makes it easier for residents and counties to declare a town abandoned — and for the state to assist dissolved municipalities with failing water systems.

In a tiny Colorado town, infighting dissolved the government. Now the water’s running out.

"Importantly, not determining that the town of Hartman is abandoned ... would leave the residents in further legal limbo during a health hazard, with no authority to conduct business, hold elections, or fix their water infrastructure so that clean water can be delivered to the town residents," the state's states. "Abandonment is the only legal mechanism in Colorado statute that creates an avenue for residents of the area to receive clean water."

Barring any appeal of the ruling, Prowers County will now assume control over all streets in Hartman, along with all town-owned property, including its water infrastructure. The county, then, will transfer control of the water system to a water operator.

Even in its abandonment, Hartman residents couldn't agree on the best path forward.

Multiple people in town objected to the process, with one saying Hartman "is not a failed town, but that Hartman is a town that was failed by the systems designed to protect it," according to the state's order.

The state, in its order, overruled the residents' objections.

As The Denver Post reported in a March story, townspeople previously compared their situation to the Hatfields and McCoys, two Appalachian families with a convoluted, generations-long feud. Elected officials regularly accused their predecessors of misusing town funds. Others said they sometimes went years without holding elections.

The town's combative reputation made nearby authorities — including multiple water operators — wary of stepping in to help.

Blau’s long-shot bid began when he submitted 2,212 petition signatures to the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office on July 9 to run as an unaffiliated candidate. Election officials said Friday afternoon that 1,918 of those signatures were from valid registered voters in the district, above the 1,500-signature threshold to make the ballot.

Blau, who is Jewish, that he was “particularly concerned by what I view as Ms. Kiros’s anti-Semitic rhetoric and her refusal to meet with leaders of Denver’s Jewish community to address their concerns.”

Blau has since set his Facebook settings to private. In a statement Friday, he said he’d heard concerns from voters about a range of matters and about President Donald Trump’s actions.

“I want the people of Denver to know this: if elected, I will not hesitate to stand up to the Trump administration whose policies are harming the people of Colorado’s First Congressional District and undermining the values we share,” Blau said. “I will oppose efforts that threaten affordable healthcare, weaken our democratic institutions, erode individual rights, and make life harder for working families.”

Kiros, a democratic socialist who defeated 15-term U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette in a stunning upset in the June 30 Democratic primary, has been criticized for comments she made about 9/11, Israel’s legitimacy as a nation, and the deadly firebombing attack on Jews and others demonstrating in Boulder last year — an act she refused to call antisemitic.

Blau launched a hasty campaign for Congress early this month, giving him just days to turn in the requisite signatures by the secretary of state’s deadline. He beat the deadline by one hour.

In a statement Friday, Kiros said: “Denver voters will get a chance in November to choose who they want fighting for them in Congress. I’m fighting for working people, families, renters, tipped workers (and) folks drowning in medical debt who deserve a better future. I plan to make my case directly (to) the people of this district because that is what it means to live in a democracy.”

Also on the November ballot is Republican Christy Peterson, who has reported raising just over $2,000 for the race in recent filings, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Kiros likely holds an advantage in the race for the Denver-based congressional district because of its heavily Democratic lean. The seat hasn’t been occupied by anyone but a Democrat since Mike McKevitt, a Republican, represented it in the early 1970s.

“This is our democracy,” Gonzalez said. “We are taking it back. Democracy belongs to the people and we are in it together.”

Gonzalez was leading with nearly 64% of votes as Wednesday afternoon, according to the Associated Press, which called the race about 25 minutes after polls closed Tuesday night.

Colorado election results for the 2026 primary

Gonzalez defeated state Sen. Jessie Danielson of Wheat Ridge and most likely will become secretary of state in blue Colorado.

She will face James Wiley -- who calls himself the “Red Flame of Liberty” and is a devotee of Elon Musk -- in the November general election. Wiley was uncontested in the Republican primary.

Gonzalez said she will not slow her campaign because the stakes are too high.

Gonzales, 41, and Danielson, 48, portrayed themselves as defenders of Colorado's election system in an era when President Donald Trump has gone after vote-by-mail states.

Gonzalez, who was elected clerk in 2022, has overseen elections in Jeffco, which has 430,000 active voters. She's also supervised the county’s motor vehicle offices, issued marriage and liquor licenses, and recorded real estate transactions. She is a lawyer who specializes in elections.

In the Senate, Danielson sponsored several voter-rights bills and worked with other Democrats to create an automatic voter registration system.

The November election will determine who succeeds Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a two-term Democrat.

Political insiders predicted Danielson would win, but Gonzalez received the backing of the Democratic party's more progressive wing.

Gonzalez said she had prepared for a late night in a tight race, so she was surprised by the early call that declared her a winner. She was leading by 27 percentage points on Wednesday afternoon.

Gonzalez said her campaign was not bankrolled by political insiders and wealthy donors, but was supported by regular people.

"They underestimated how powerful that was," she said.

The Libertarian Party also held a contested primary. Alex Astley, an engineer from Holyoke, defeated Sean Vadney, a 25-year-old entertainer and music DJ from Highlands Ranch.

Astley was leading with 62% of the 2,111 votes that had been counted in that primary.

The race pits state Sen. Jessie Danielson, 48, of Wheat Ridge, against Amanda Gonzalez, 41, the Jefferson County clerk and recorder. They are seeking to replace Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who is term-limited.

The Libertarian Party also has a contested primary race with 33-year-old , an engineer from Holyoke, running against , a 25-year-old entertainer and music DJ from Highlands Ranch.

The Republican primary is uncontested. The Democratic and Libertarian winners in November will face , who calls himself the “Red Flame of Liberty” and is a self-described “Dark MAGA” candidate — a nod to Elon Musk.

While the secretary of state cannot single-handedly change Colorado’s election system, the position is increasingly under scrutiny because of Trump’s attacks on vote-by-mail states, and his insistence on nationalizing elections rather than leaving the states to decide how to administer them. As the top state executive responsible for elections, the person holding the office sits on the frontline of Trump’s actions to challenge mail voting.

On the campaign trail, and have touted their backgrounds in advocating for voters’ rights as both worked for political interest groups before running for office. Both said any claims about a stolen 2020 election are lies, and both said they want to keep Colorado’s vote-by-mail system.

Danielson’s political involvement began at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she volunteered as a student for . She eventually became the abortion-rights group’s state political director.

From there, she moved to , a progressive voter-rights organization, where she served as state director for Colorado and Minnesota. In that role, Danielson helped write Colorado’s mail-in ballot laws, fundamentally changing how people in the state make their voices heard.

As a two-term state senator, Danielson sponsored several voter-rights bills at the state Capitol, including one that ensured people who are blind or physically unable to write can vote in private by filing out electronic ballots. She also worked with other Democrats to create an automatic voter registration system in Colorado.

Danielson said she is the best candidate because she has worked on voting rights as the leader of a nonprofit and as a state senator. In those roles, she has earned the trust of county elections officials of all parties.

Trump has threatened Colorado’s vote-by-mail elections, and the next secretary of state must defend the state’s system, she said.

“I have worked to Trump-proof these elections for years, and I’m going to keep doing it when I’m the next secretary of state,” Danielson said. “We need someone with experience and knowledge of our voting system to defend against these attacks from Trump.”

Gonzalez was elected in 2022 as the Jefferson County — a role that puts her in charge of running elections in a county with 430,000 active voters. As county clerk, she also supervises the county’s motor vehicle offices, issues marriage and liquor licenses and records real estate transactions.

“You have to know the system in order to protect it,” Gonzalez said. “I’m the only person in this race from any party who has experience running secure elections and fending off interference from outsiders. This job is not legislative. It’s operational. It’s an executive position.”

Gonzalez, who has a law degree from the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law, became involved in election law as executive director for , another voting rights group. Gonzalez said she pushed Colorado’s elections administrators to translate ballots into other languages so people who do not speak English as a first language could better understand their Blue Books and ballots.

While the secretary of state’s role as an elections supervisor takes center stage, the job also comes with the responsibility of managing business filings for companies and tracking charitable nonprofits. The office also licenses notaries.

Gonzalez said her experience running the Jefferson County clerk’s office puts her in the best position to manage all the roles the secretary of state plays.

The secretary of state’s election is the first contested statewide race for the Libertarian Party since 2020, when two men competed for Sen. John Hickenlooper’s seat.

Neither Libertarian candidate running for secretary of state has elected experience.

Vadney said he chose to run because of a lifelong interest in politics and that voting is an important issue for him. He does not believe the 2020 election was stolen, but would urge Colorado lawmakers to return the state to in-person voting.

Vadney has a criminal record that he says was connected to a mental health breakdown and alcohol abuse. He pleaded guilty to third-degree assault of a police officer and criminal mischief in connection with a December 2021 incident. He served three years on probation, and the criminal mischief charge was expunged after he finished his sentence. Vadney told The Denver Post he no longer drinks alcohol and has received counseling.

Astley said he would neither affirm nor deny the inaccurate claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Instead, he said that, as an engineer, he needs to see proof before he decides.

“I’m not able to speak to that because I haven’t seen any documents about it,” he said.

Astley said he would push for a hybrid mail-in voting system. Voters would receive ballots by mail but would need to return them in person and show a government-issued ID, he said.

A statewide grand jury indicted Cherrell Long of Nevada and Martin Arellano of Texas on three felony counts — attempting to influence a public servant, elections forgery and forgery — and a misdemeanor count of perjury, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said this week.

According to the indictment, Long and Arellano were independent contractors for Victor’s Canvassing in Colorado Springs and were tasked with gathering signatures for Amendment 80, a school choice measure that Colorado voters rejected in the November 2024 election.

Long and Arellano are accused of forging signatures on the petitions by signing the names of dead people and voters who had canceled their registrations because they had moved to a different county or out of state.

A company that reviewed the petition after it was first turned in found that of the 190,000 signatures submitted, 131,000 “appeared to be valid,” which was over the 124,238 signature threshold, the attorney general’s office said.

But staff at the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office found suspicious signatures during a post-election review because several did not match signatures that the state already had on record, the attorney general’s office said.

Investigators believe Long forged 19 signatures, including those of four dead people, while Arellano is accused of forging six signatures, also including four dead people.

“Petition circulators who submit fraudulent signatures to the state to put a candidate or initiative on the ballot must be held accountable for their unlawful conduct,” Weiser said in a statement. “We are committed to protecting our elections and safeguarding the process for petitioning onto the ballot.”

Anyone with information about Long or Arellano’s whereabouts should report the information to local law enforcement, state officials said.

Her Tuesday evening announcement came 48 hours before she and her Democratic rival were set to compete in the 4th District Democratic assembly Thursday night.

Calvarese threw her support to Navy veteran Eileen Laubacher, despite having sued the Colorado Democratic Party over her opponent’s eligibility to compete for a nomination to the June 30 primary ballot. Calvarese’s lawsuit last month.

“We’ve made the difficult decision to suspend my campaign to represent Colorado’s 4th Congressional District,” Calvarese’s campaign . “Congratulations to Eileen Laubacher and her team. I hope this carries through to a win in November.”

The two had competed for support in local caucuses and county assemblies ahead of the district assembly. Calvarese thanked her supporters and said only that “I’m sorry we fell short” in Tuesday. She also was trailing Laubacher in fundraising at the end of 2025.

In a statement Wednesday, Laubacher said Calvarese “has helped elevate the visibility of this race and engage people across the district in meaningful ways.”

“It¶¶Ňőap time to turn the corner and focus fully on what comes next and what matters most: defeating Lauren Boebert in November,” she said.

Laubacher, a longtime Republican and then unaffiliated voter, . She had the biggest haul of the final quarter of last year of any candidate running for Congress in Colorado, pulling down just over $2 million and bringing her contribution total in the election cycle to nearly $6.5 million.

She also had about five times the cash on hand that Calvarese had at year’s end.

Calvarese was chasing the Democratic nomination through the congressional assembly process only, while Laubacher had been competing both at the assembly and by submitting signatures to the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office in March to get on the primary ballot through the petition process.

Laubacher’s petition has from state elections officials. But she stands as the only Democratic candidate left in the race after contenders John Padora and Jenna Preston neither petitioned their way onto the ballot nor were listed as contenders at Thursday’s district assembly on the website.

Laubacher will have a tough road ahead in the 4th District, given its makeup as the most Republican-leaning district in the state. Calvarese lost to Boebert in 2024 by over 10 percentage points after Boebert switched over from Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District.

, the advocacy group backing , submitted nearly 169,000 signatures to petition the measure onto the ballot. The measure needed about 125,000 to qualify. The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office validated the petitions Monday.

The ballot measure seeks to define males and females based on their biological reproductive systems, and prohibit them from competing on K-12 and college sports teams that don’t comport with their sex assigned at birth. The measure would need a simple majority of votes this November to become law in 2027.

Earlier this month, Protect Kids Colorado secured a spot on the ballot for a measure to require life sentences for people convicted of child sex trafficking.

The group has also submitted signatures for a ballot measure that would prohibit gender-affirming surgery for transgender children and minors younger than 18. The Secretary of State’s Office has not yet ruled on that measure.

“What we have accomplished together is only the beginning,” Erin Lee, executive director of Protect Kids Colorado, said in a statement. “More than 3,000 Coloradans from every walk of life, collecting more than half a million signatures, stepped forward with their time, talent and treasure because protecting children is not a partisan issue; it¶¶Ňőap a moral one. Two qualified, one more to go!”

The proposed ban on transgender youth competing on teams that match their gender identity immediately drew outcry from , an LGBTQ+ rights organization. Mardi Moore, the group’s chief executive officer, said the measure “is not rooted in Colorado values,” and that the legislature has shot down .

“This is an attack on Colorado families modeled after national extremist efforts. Coloradans believe in fairness, freedom, and the right of every person to live their lives,” Moore said in a statement. “We will work tirelessly between now and November to make sure voters understand exactly what this effort is about. It¶¶Ňőap about bullying little kids and taking opportunities away from a handful of people.”

The for years has recognized the right of transgender athletes to play on sports teams that match their gender identities. Following a lawsuit, however, the organization agreed last year not to penalize school districts with transgender athlete bans.

In January, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a case challenging the legality of bans on transgender girls and women playing school sports in Idaho and West Virginia. The justices states to enact such prohibitions.

But clues sprinkled in a made with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday suggest an abrupt relocation, not unlike an upset partner moving out in the middle of the night.

The data-analytics company reportedly signed a lease in September for 11,400 square feet at the Financial House, located at 205 Detroit St. in Cherry Creek, and had even submitted plans to remodel the space, according to a BusinessDen story based on public records.

That would suggest Palantir saw a future in Colorado and was committed to Denver. But that address hasn’t shown up in any corporate filing made with the SEC or with the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office. If Palantir had ever intended to make Cherry Creek its headquarters, the plans are off.

In a change of address filing the company made with the secretary of state on Feb. 9, Palantir listed its principal office as being at 518 17th St., Suite 1015, replacing its prior address of 1200 17th St., Floor 15, which it had listed as its home since a filing made on July 23, 2023 — and . The first address is in the DC Building, while the second one is in the Tabor Center.

On Wednesday, the company informed the state of another address change — , an apparent coworking space in Aventura, Florida.

Both Gov. Jared Polis and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston described being caught off guard by the company’s decision to relocate. Palantir executives didn’t offer state and local leaders a chance to talk them into staying. But the company had a reputation for being tight-lipped and keeping to itself.

Even the company’s local headcount remains a mystery. Polis said Tuesday that it might be around 500.

Palantir’s importance wasn’t as much in its employee count as in its market value, which at its peak late last year surpassed that of every other Colorado company combined. It single-handedly put Denver on the map as an artificial intelligence hub, although not without controversy.

The company, which has extensive government contracts, has faced repeated protests over the assistance provided to the Israeli military in Gaza, as well as its recent contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to help it in its deportation efforts. A protest at the end of January was larger than usual.

“We take this as proof that coordinated, collaborative action by the people is the most effective route to bringing about a better world. We won’t stop until Palantir is fully out of Denver and is brought to justice. We look forward to supporting the people of South Florida in the continued fight against this destructive corporation and its billionaire owners,” said Michael Hughes of Denver Anti-War Action, in a statement Wednesday.

Moving to South Florida, which has a much larger immigrant community than Denver, likely won’t shield it from protests.

New address is a coworking space

For a big public company with $332.5 billion in market value to abruptly shift its address and put its executives in a coworking space would be the corporate equivalent of sleeping on a best friend’s couch while going through a breakup. If the sudden move were a movie, Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” could provide the soundtrack.

It remains to be seen how much of the company’s workforce will remain in Denver, but the company is reported to be looking for more permanent space in the Miami area.

Aventura is a suburb on the northern edge of Miami-Dade County, closer to Fort Lauderdale than downtown Miami. The suite number is a mailing address for the Industrious coworking space, which is located within the Aventura Mall Office Tower, a building that has about 250,000 square feet of space and is attached to one of the nation’s most active malls.

Based on its typical footprint, Industrious might lease about 10% of that space, and of that amount, only a fraction of that would have likely been available for Palantir to take.

Palantir listed two key risks associated with its presence in Colorado in its 10-K, the first related to climate change and the second to the state’s new AI regulations.

“… our Colorado headquarters has experienced climate-related events and may continue to at an increasing frequency in the future, including drought, water scarcity, heat waves and wildfires, resulting in air quality impacts and power shutoffs. Additionally, while many of our employees have returned to our offices, it could be particularly difficult to mitigate the impact of these events on our employees continuing to work remotely,” the company said.

But if Palantir was looking for climate stability, Florida is hardly the place to go. That state has been hit by roughly 500 tropical and subtropical cyclones in records going back to 1851. And there have been only 18 years in the past 175 years where a hurricane didn’t strike somewhere. The 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons proved especially rough.

A more likely explanation is what the company said about the Colorado Artificial Intelligence Act, or CAIA, which the state legislature passed in 2024 and which is set to take effect this summer.

Palantir specifically called out Colorado’s AI legislation as a risk to its operations in its latest 10-K filing, saying the law mirrors provisions appearing in  European Union regulations. It also mentions concerns about narrower regulatory efforts on AI in California, Utah and Texas.

“When such legislation or commitments, or if similar legislation or commitments in other jurisdictions, are enacted or adopted, compliance with such obligations may be difficult, onerous, and costly, and could adversely affect our business, reputation, financial condition, results of operations, and growth prospects,” the company warned investors.

Palantir’s departure ‘a real loss’

Attendees gathered on Wednesday at the Colorado Technology Association’s annual Tech Summit were also at a loss to explain why Palantir left, while acknowledging the company didn’t rub shoulders with the local tech community. They lacked insights and feared their warnings about the impacts of the state’s new AI law were coming true.

“I think it is a real loss,” said Seth Levine, a co-founder and partner in Foundry, a Boulder-based venture capital firm.

Levine was awarded the CTA’s Bob Newman Lifetime Achievement Award, along with David Cohen, founder and CEO of TechStars, a leading tech business incubator that got its start in Boulder.

After Colorado passed its AI bill into law, Levine said he heard from several investors saying they wouldn’t invest in any Colorado companies that Foundry brought to them. It might have been an overreaction, but members of the tech community nationally considered Colorado to be heavy-handed and stifling innovation.

Cohen raised the possibility that Palantir was lured away by the appeal of Miami, which has become a popular destination for tech and financial companies and billionaires looking to escape higher income taxes in other states.

“Miami is doing a good job of marketing itself,” Cohen said, although as someone who knows the tech scene there, he questions whether the appeal is sustainable.