Less than a month before ballots start arriving in mailboxes , Marx this week reported having about $215,000 in the bank. Weiser, the state’s attorney general, reported about $827,000 in his campaign account.

In the most recent campaign fundraising filings, covering July 28 through Sept. 2 and due Tuesday, Weiser reported raising almost $687,000. Marx raised almost $625,000.

But Weiser spent less than half of his haul — about $229,000 — and much of that was on payroll. Marx, meanwhile, spent almost 90% of his new fundraising, or more than $551,000. More than half of the total — almost $335,000 — went to a direct-mail fundraising company.

Both major-party candidates also have independent expenditure committees supporting them, and those can spend and raise unlimited funds, albeit without any coordination with the candidates’ campaigns. Both operations appear to have gone largely dark following the June 30 primary election. Freedom IEC, the group backing Marx, reported spending about $29,000, with about $28,000 raised, over the past month. Fighting For Colorado, the group backing Weiser, reported spending about $124 and raising just over $3,000.

Labor Day historically marks the start of the sprint toward Election Day, with heavy spending expected in October to sway voters who haven’t made up their minds or cast their ballots yet. Election Day is Nov. 3.

Colorado clerks will begin mailing ballots to voters Oct. 2. Weiser is the heavy favorite to succeed term-limited Gov. Jared Polis, with Colorado voters choosing only one Republican governor in the past 50 years and the state trending steadily blue over the past decade.

Marx, a first-time candidate who’s a former nonprofit ministry leader, emerged from a bruising primary campaign that came down to only a few thousand votes over state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer — and ended with both of his GOP rivals saying they would not support him in the general election.

Marx’s candidacy has also been marred by ongoing questions about his biography and fundraising practices. On Aug. 31, the secretary of state’s office announced it was seeking against the Marx campaign for allegedly accepting donations over the state limit and “aggravating factors.”

A is slated to begin Thursday.

Among other candidates, Greg Lopez, a former short-term Republican member of Congress now seeking the governorship as an unaffiliated candidate, reported ending the latest campaign filing period with less than $18,000 on hand. He raised less than $17,000 during the period.

Other Colorado races

Here is how much money major-party candidates raised in other state races July 28 through Sept. 2, and how much they had on hand at the end of the reporting period:

Attorney General

• Michael Allen (Republican): raised $97,812.61, reported $62,506.59 on hand.
• Jena Griswold (Democrat): raised $241,521, reported $292,067.19 on hand.

Secretary of State

• Amanda Gonzalez (Democrat): raised $64,721.82, reported $84,499.32 on hand.
• James Wiley (Republican): raised $13,516.32, reported a debt of $4,305.11.

Treasurer

• Kevin Grantham (Republican): raised $9,231, reported $59,612.22 on hand.
• Jeff Bridges (Democrat): raised $13,101, reported $228,880.89 on hand.

In state legislative races, party political action committees that aim to expand or reduce Democrats’ majorities also reported recent fundraising and spending:

Colorado House of Representatives

• Colorado Way Forward (PAC supporting Democrats): raised $226,750, spent $38,583.18. Reported $1,179,792.08 total raised this cycle.
• New Day Colorado (PAC supporting Republicans): raised $112,505, spent $87,784.40. Reported $1,260,601.19 total raised this cycle.

State Senate

• All Together Colorado (PAC supporting Democrats): raised $217,575, spent $72,730.85. Reported $1,678,887.09 total raised this cycle.
• Senate Majority Fund (PAC supporting Republicans): raised $434,200, spent $189,419.75. Reported $1,928,319.11 total raised this cycle.

Residents of two Colorado counties — each at opposite ends of the political spectrum — have revived the debate and are set to decide this fall whether to add two more county decision-makers to the mix on each’s board of commissioners.

Left-leaning Boulder County and conservative Douglas County will have commission expansion questions on the November ballot. In each, a second question will ask voters how they want those commissioners to represent the electorate — by a vote of five distinct districts or a combination of district and at-large voting across three districts.

Those parameters , and they include rules for how counties can redistrict to account for the changes.

Douglas County will have a third question on the ballot asking if voters there want to grow to five districts, with the vote for any commissioner remaining an at-large vote. The county commissioners referred the measure to the ballot last month.

Robert Preuhs, who chairs the Department of Political Science at Metropolitan State University of Denver, said the dual effort in this election cycle across two very different counties tracks the wider dissatisfaction Americans are feeling with today’s political landscape — be it over inflation, the war in Iran or the potential hazards of artificial intelligence.

“These efforts reflect frustration with the establishment, and that is going to permeate the ballot from top to bottom,” Preuhs said. “It’s local concerns, but also broader national dissatisfaction with democratic systems.”

Bob Yates, who sits on the organizing committee for , says it’s less about politics, in his view, and more about improving a system of governance for a county that has grown to 330,000 people.

Big Tent Boulder County, which is driving the expansion effort, has a number of local luminaries on its organizing committee, including state Sen. Judy Amabile, former Longmont Mayor Joan Peck and Ashley Stolzmann, one of Boulder County’s three commissioners.

Yates, who served two terms on the Boulder City Council, said having two additional commissioners could allow each of the board’s members to better focus on the various needs of residents, whether they live in the mountains, in cities or in rural unincorporated areas of the county.

“Three (commissioners) is a very inefficient form of government,” he said. “With five commissioners, we would have representation that would better understand the diverse needs of the residents of Boulder County.”

In Douglas County, the expansion campaign also originated in an outside initiative, and it’s taken on a distinctly more political tone — with no shortage of last-minute drama. The county has faced two challenges to contentious changes the Republican commissioners sought to make to the process, only seeing resolution late last week.

The group behind the expansion effort in Douglas County — called Stop the Power Grab — is the same group that fought against an effort by the commissioners to adopt home rule powers for the county. The home rule campaign lost a special election last year in spectacular fashion.

The group launched the to urge a yes vote on expansion in the Nov. 3 election. It collected more than 20,000 signatures to get the measure on the ballot.

“Can three people really represent 400,000 of us? Should just two people have the power to make decisions for all of us?” the website asks, referring to the fact that decisions in the county now need matching votes from just two commissioners.

Kim Turnage, a proponent of expansion, said five commissioners representing five districts would reduce the number of people each commissioner represents from the full county under today’s at-large setup to fewer than 100,000.

“I think what people want is elected leaders who represent them and who actively listen to, respond to and reflect their voices in local government,” she said.

Just 5 counties have larger commissions

State law permits boards of county commissioners to grow from three to five members once a county has reached a population of 70,000.

To date, five of Colorado’s 64 counties have opted to make that move: Arapahoe and Adams in metro Denver; El Paso, home to Colorado Springs; Weld in northern Colorado; and Pitkin, home to Aspen. Adams County was the most recent to do so, with voters authorizing expansion in 2012. Arapahoe County, the second most recent county to grow its commission, made the switch in 1997.

Attempts aren’t always successful. A campaign to buttress Jefferson County’s Board of County Commissioners fell short more than a decade ago, while an effort to get a question on the was also stymied.

This time it’s different, Yates said. Advocates of the move created an issue committee, which had raised just over $100,000 as of the end of July, according to state election data.

“The county has simply outgrown the 1861 model,” he said, referring to the . “We’re a very diverse set of people. We need diversity in our government.”

Whether that translates to a Republican getting on the long-blue commission is unknown. No Republican has been a commissioner in Boulder County . By the same token, it’s been decades since Douglas County had a Democrat on its board.

But narrowing down the county to district-based voting across more districts, Preuhs said, would allow for a better chance that like-minded voters could be grouped in a way that benefits one party over another.

“It’s about the only way a minority party can get a voice,” he said.

Douglas County drama

Douglas County Commissioner George Teal said he’s “pretty agnostic” about the measure. But he said there would be costs to growing the government.

“I just want the people of Douglas County to know that if they want five commissioners, it will come with a cost to the county budget to have those five commissioners,” he said.

A newly elected commissioner in Douglas County a year, which is set under parameters in state law.

Late last month, Teal and his two colleagues, Abe Laydon and Kevin Van Winkle, added language to the citizen-initiated measure claiming that paying for two new commissioners, along with their health and retirement benefits and potential support staff, could run from $760,000 to $1.3 million a year.

That triggered a challenge from one of the measure’s backers, who said the county’s estimated costs were speculative and not necessary as ballot language because the measure wasn’t asking for a tax hike.

That challenge was shot down by the commissioners at the end of a testy hearing on Thursday.

On Aug. 31, the board of commissioners also added a question to the ballot that, if approved by voters — and assuming the first ballot question also passes — would create five districts for five commissioners. But it would require that all members be elected at-large, rather than within their districts.

That measure was challenged by state Rep. Bob Marshall, a Highlands Ranch Democrat who has locked horns with the commissioners before. He claimed the commissioners didn’t give proper public notice for the hearing for the new ballot measure before approving it. He also said the measure didn’t comply with the options outlined by state statute for how commissioners should be elected.

The commissioners rejected his challenge at a hearing on Friday.

Teal said the extra question was added to the ballot because he saw his and his colleagues’ role as largely an executive one. Both the president and the Colorado governor represent the executive branch of government, he said, and are elected by everyone in the country or state.

In late August, a new issue committee called Public Safety Funding Over Politician Pay formed to oppose the expansion effort in Douglas County. It has yet to report any contributions or expenditures.

‘Need for representation’

In Boulder County, the board has three commissioner districts, and each commissioner must live in the district she represents. But each is elected by the entire county electorate.

There is a split on the Board of County Commissioners itself on which way to go. Two commissioners, Claire Levy and Marta Loachamin, oppose expansion.

Stolzmann is for it.

“As the size of the county has grown over time, there’s more of a need for more representation,” said Stolzmann, a former Louisville mayor. “Longmont should be able to elect their Longmont representative, Boulder should be able to elect their Boulder representative, and (the) southeast county should be able to elect their southeast representative.”

She pointed out that both her colleagues are currently taking time off. That has left the county unable to move forward with business until there’s a quorum again.

“If you have five people, that is much less likely to happen,” Stolzmann said.

More bodies in the room, she said, will reduce the likelihood of scandal or malfeasance in county business, as happened 15 years ago when Adams County was charged more than $1.8 million for road work that was never completed. That controversy directly led to voters in 2012 deciding to increase the size of the board of commissioners from three members to five.

Stolzmann also said more voices on the board means more differing views and potentially more comprehensive policy solutions than can be found among a trio of commissioners.

“As soon as two people agree, they tend to move on — and mitigating factors are not considered,” she said.

But Loachamin said there were bigger priorities for a county , which is expected to result in job cuts next year at the county level.

“Right now, we have people who don’t have food, who have no place to sleep and who live in fear of immigration authorities,” she said. “Redistricting is not a priority for me.”

Voters from both parties in the Republican’s 8th Congressional District overwhelmingly favor a lighter touch than the raids and mass roundups used in President Donald Trump’s second term, according to poll results released Wednesday by the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland.

Colorado’s 8th District, which takes in parts of Weld, Larimer and Adams counties north of Denver, has among the state’s eight congressional districts. Both Evans and his Democratic opponent, state Rep. Manny Rutinel, are Latino.

“There is tremendous common ground to build on to create legislative proposals (on immigration),” said Steven Kull, director of the Program for Public Consultation, which conducted the poll. “There is an overarching sense that action��must be taken.”

Still, bipartisan agreement on immigration reform has eluded Congress for years.

The survey, which Kull addressed for reporters on Wednesday in an online briefing, found voters on the right and left largely agree on a number of immigration-related questions both nationally and across more than two dozen battleground House districts. That’s true whether it’s about creating pathways to citizenship for people brought to the United States illegally as children or about requiring employers to verify a worker’s immigration status before hiring them.

The findings come from the latest release of a poll that included 500 voters in the 8th District in May and June. Earlier releases have addressed their views on several other issues, including the regulation of artificial intelligence and the government’s role in healthcare.

When it comes to immigration, Democrats are intent on pinning some of the uglier sides of enforcement under Trump to Republican incumbents in hopes of taking control of the closely divided House chamber in January. Rutinel has made criticism of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s sometimes-harsh enforcement tactics a central theme of his campaign.

Evans has tried to create daylight between himself and the administration on the issue, highlighting his decision last year to join five other congressional Republicans in penning a letter to ICE leadership about its enforcement strategies, and asking whether the agency was prioritizing the deportation of criminals.

Erin Covey, the U.S. House editor for the Cook Political Report, said getting out from under Trump’s shadow will be a tall order for Evans. The 8th District, she said, ranks second in the nation in Latino population for a battleground district currently led by a Republican.

Cook .

“I think Trump is an anchor on Evans in a way he isn’t on other Republicans in other competitive districts,” she said. “Latino voters are going to be a crucial part of either candidate’s fortunes.”

In Colorado’s 8th District, 66% of Republican or GOP-leaning voters and 87% of Democrats or those leaning left said they favored a long-term visa for immigrants who have been in the country for a while and who have committed no crime.

An even higher share of Republican voters and leaners — 77% — said children brought to the United States illegally as children should be provided a path to citizenship, provided they have not committed a significant crime and are employed, in college or serving in the military. Democrats and left-leaners registered an 88% approval of that question, according to the poll.

A dual question asked whether employers should be required to use E-Verify to ensure workers they hire are in the country legally and if more work visas should be issued, provided there’s a demand for workers. Both Democratice- and Republican-leaning voters responded overwhelmingly in the affirmative: 87% for Democrats and 85% for Republicans.

A majority of voters on both sides, according to the poll results, said more judges should be hired to adjudicate asylum cases. Sixty-six percent of Republicans were in favor while 83% of Democrats said yes.

The one question on which 8th District Republicans lined up nearly perfectly with the Trump administration was the need to deport those in the country illegally who had committed a crime. Ninety-eight percent of GOP-affiliated voters supported that policy, while 74% of Democrat-leaning respondents in the district did.

The University of Maryland survey came out just days after a Colorado Latino Policy Agenda poll revealed that 66% of Latino voters statewide said they felt the country was on the wrong track as their frustrations about the cost of living — which ranked higher than any other issue, including immigration — had gone unaddressed and, for many, had worsened.

For Evans, the dissatisfaction among Latino voters poses a potential hurdle to reelection. Only 34% of voting Latinos in his district regarded him favorably, while 42% viewed him unfavorably, according to that poll, which was conducted between July 1 and Aug. 11.

Latino voters in the state have consistently said they feel the country is going in the wrong direction, and they reiterated that dissatisfaction in a poll released Tuesday by the Colorado Latino Policy Agenda. Sixty-six percent of respondents said they felt the country was on the wrong track as their frustrations about the cost of living — which ranked higher than any other issue, including immigration — had gone unaddressed and, for many, had worsened.

Against that national critique, the annual poll has repeatedly found that Latino voters still hold a positive view of their own state. But that grace appears to have been exhausted: Forty-six percent of respondents this year said the state was moving in the wrong direction, against 40% who said the opposite.

That’s a stunning 26-percentage-point swing from the same poll last year. It’s also the first time in the poll’s six-year history that it has found an overall disapproval for Colorado’s direction among Latino voters.

“The main thing is the economy,” said Gabriel Sanchez, the pollster for BSP Research who conducted the survey. “Poll after poll, Latinos are telling us loudly: ‘Address the economy. We can’t afford housing. We can’t afford groceries. We can’t afford gas.’

“We’ve seen consistently in the poll that anger and frustration was largely at the federal government. Now, what we’re seeing is that frustration pointing toward government, period. And that’s because people are saying, ‘Look, every year things are getting worse. Somebody fix it.’ ”

The poll was conducted between July 1 and Aug. 11 in partnership with the advocacy groups Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights, or COLOR, and Voces Unidas. It included 1,606 registered Latino voters and has a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points.

The respondents were also critical of who influences their government, saying that wealthy donors, corporate business groups, political consultants and outside PACs, and oil and gas companies wielded too much influence in the state. Eighty-one percent said they were concerned that campaign contributions from wealthy outside groups limited policies that could address the affordability crisis.

Asked to rank what federal and state policymakers should focus on, the top responses included the cost of living and healthcare, increasing wages, and building more affordable and attainable housing. Forty-three percent of respondents said their financial situation had worsened in the past year, compared to 22% who said their situation had improved.

More than half of voters who said their situation has worsened blamed Trump. (Ten percent also blamed billionaires and corporations, the second-highest response.)

Latino voters’ dissatisfaction with Colorado’s direction did not extend to the Democratic officials leading its government. U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, Gov. Jared Polis, Secretary of State Jena Griswold and Attorney General Phil Weiser all had double-digit net approval ratings, with positive appraisals exceeding negative ones significantly.

Respondents also approved of Republican U.S. Reps. Lauren Boebert and Jeff Hurd and their Democratic colleagues, U.S. Reps. Diana DeGette, Brittany Pettersen, Jason Crow and Joe Neguse.

Freshman Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans, whose 8th Congressional District seat is among the most hotly contested in the country this fall, was less appreciated. Only 34% of voting Latinos in his district regarded him favorably, while 42% viewed him unfavorably. Respondents in CD8 disapproved of congressional Republicans by 22 percentage points, compared to views of congressional Democrats that were net-favorable by 6 points.

That’s notable given that Latinos make up more than 38% of the CD8 electorate, .

What’s more, 61% of voters in the district disapproved of Trump. Of those who said the country was going in the wrong direction or their financial situation had worsened, a majority of Latino CD8 voters blamed Trump more than anyone else for those problems.

But Latino voters in the district also had the lowest overall opinion of the direction of the state. With an unpopular president in a blue state, Evans has focused his campaign on opposing Democrats at home. But while they’re unhappy with the state, CD8 Latino voters simultaneously have strongly favorable views of Polis and Colorado state lawmakers.

While those concerns may spell trouble for Evans, the poll’s top-line takeaway about affordability is a call to action for government officials across the political spectrum, said Alex Sánchez, the president and CEO of Voces Unidas.

“The problem is the lack of action by those in power who can do something about it,” he said. “For the first time since we began this project, more Latinos believe Colorado is moving in the wrong direction than the right direction. That is concerning. State leaders should take that seriously.”

Sánchez said the affordability concerns were “being made worse by what’s happening in our streets, in our communities.” The survey found that 40% of respondents statewide knew someone who had been deported as Trump has pushed to increase immigration arrests and deportations.

To that end, significant majorities of the poll’s respondents opposed letting immigration agents arrest people directly from jails. They backed efforts to allow Coloradans to sue federal officials and opposed allowing the governor to “voluntarily” share immigrants’ information with the federal government, a nod to Polis’ repeated attempts to cooperate with ICE subpoenas.

But the respondents were not entirely progressive. Majorities also supported conservative-backed ballot measures related to penalties for fentanyl possession; trans athletes competing in high school and college sports; and gender-affirming surgeries for minors.

Initiative 195 would create a graduated income tax for the state under which higher earners pay a greater percentage of their income than lower earners, generating significantly more tax revenue. Colorado currently uses a flat tax system, where all taxpayers, regardless of income, pay 4.4% of their income in state taxes. For the ballot, the measure will be assigned an amendment number.

The measure was the last of more than a dozen proposed questions to be certified by the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office after it determined the proponents had collected enough petition signatures. Voters will decide on 14 statewide questions total, in addition to the slew of state, federal and local elections that will make up the Nov. 3 ballot.

The graduated income tax proposal is likely to be one of the marquee ballot box battles heading into the fall.

If passed, the measure would keep the current tax rate for Coloradans making between $100,000 and $500,000 per year. It would raise the marginal income tax rate to 7.4% on income over $500,000 and less than $750,000; to 7.9% on income between $750,000 and $1 million; and to 8.4% on income over $1 million.

The tax rate for Coloradans making $25,000 per year or less would drop slightly to 3.7%, and the rate for Coloradans making between $25,000 and $100,000 per year would decrease to 4.2%.

expect the proposal would bring in nearly $2 billion more in revenue every year to the state, which this year has a general fund budget of more than $17 billion. That money would be earmarked for education, healthcare, and early childcare and preschool.

Medicaid, which would be included, has been a massive driver of the state’s recent fiscal crunches.

“Every Colorado student deserves a great public school and real pathways to opportunity, with great teachers who are paid and supported the way they deserve,” Lisa Weil, the executive director of Great Education Colorado, one of the key backers of the initiative, said in a statement. “Initiative 195 qualifying for the ballot means Coloradans will have the chance to vote their values and build a tax system where everyone pays their fair share and our neighborhood schools finally get what they need to do right by our kids.”

One of the other measures proposed for the ballot, Proposition 136, explicitly seeks to undercut the graduated income tax measure by setting a cap on the state income tax rate. Earlier it was designated as Initiative 232 during the petitioning phase.

If voters pass both, it could set up a potential legal battle over which takes precedence and becomes state law. Both measures would require more than 50% support to become law. The graduated income tax proposal, while a constitutional amendment, would only remove language from the constitution, and thus does not need to clear the 55% threshold for amendments.

“We’ve been prepared for this fight for months,” Michael Fields, the president of the conservative advocacy group Advance Colorado, said in a statement. “That’s why we qualified Initiative 232 — the Income Tax Cap — for the ballot. An overwhelming number of Coloradans agree that the progressive tax hike is too high, too extreme, and will take good paying jobs away from working families and out of our state.

“The Tax Cap is the better answer for anyone who believes Colorado should be more affordable for everyone,” he added.

The other questions that made the statewide ballot would:

• for the possession or sale of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids.
• mandate time in prison for .
• ban not aligned with their biological sex.
• ban for people younger than 18.
• require that law enforcement when an immigrant without proper legal status is charged with a violent crime.
• establish a right for cooking and heating.
• require that sales taxes on sporting goods be earmarked for conservation efforts.
• require additional verification when voters submit mail-in ballots, such as a driver’s license number or partial Social Security number.
• ban congressional redistricting outside the typical once-a-decade census cycle.
• create a constitutional right to hunt and fish.
• require that ballot questions be written at an 8th-grade reading level.
• allow the state to keep more tax money, typically returned under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights revenue cap, to put toward education. That measure was referred by the legislature.

Another measure, which would have made it a constitutional requirement to better fund the state’s roads, was pulled days before the deadline to do so after Attorney General Phil Weiser, lawmakers and the backers of the measure reached a deal to secure more money for roads in future years. Weiser is the Democratic nominee for governor.

All of the items are being renumbered as amendments or propositions now that they’ve been approved for the ballot, with the ballot titles still to come. The secretary of state must certify the ballot by Friday. That is also the deadline for groups backing ballot initiatives to withdraw their measures.

County clerks can start mailing out general election ballots on Oct. 2, about a month before the election.

If approved, would also exempt that sales tax revenue from falling under the state’s spending cap set by , the mechanism that determines refunds to taxpayers. The measure could generate an estimated $175 million annually for programs that improve ecosystems, protect wildlife, mitigate wildfire damage and provide outdoor access, according to supporters of the proposition.

The measure would not increase taxes, raise prices or change the retail experience for consumers or businesses, said Tarn Udall, a senior attorney for , one of the conservation groups supporting the ballot measure. The proposition would apply to tax collected on the sale of products like tents, campers, skis, boats and fishing equipment.

During the petitioning phase, the state . The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office announced Aug. 21 that the petitioners submitted enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot.

The proposition’s proponents said its passage could spur much-needed investment in the state’s natural resources. Many projects are ready to go but lack funding, they said.

“Colorado’s lands and water are foundational to our communities, economy, and way of life,” Robyn Paulekas, the executive director of Keep It Colorado, said in a statement. “We have a unique opportunity to make smart, long-term investments that conserve working lands, protect water resources, expand access to the outdoors, and reduce wildfire risk.”

Proposition 137 would dedicate the majority of the set-aside sales tax revenue to — the trust fund that allocates proceeds from the Colorado Lottery to conservation, outdoor recreation and wildlife projects — and to wildfire mitigation programs through and the Colorado State Forest Service.

Great Outdoors Colorado would receive about $83 million a year. The money could be used to designate new public lands and state parks, maintain trails and outdoor infrastructure, and restore ecosystems. If approved, the proposition would .

Wildfire prevention programs would also receive about $83 million, which they could use for prescribed burns, wildland firefighting training and to help local communities create wildfire response plans.

Wildfire prevention is significantly more cost-efficient than wildfire response and cleanup, said Jennifer Mueller, the CEO of , a Colorado nonprofit that works to prevent wildfires.

“The longer we wait, the larger of a problem this becomes,” Mueller said.

Smaller amounts — about $4.3 million each — would go to the state’s Outdoor Equity Grant Program to help people access the outdoors and to the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Industry Office to help create new jobs in the industry.

A broad swath of conservation and fire groups support the ballot measure, including American Rivers, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, Conservation Colorado, San Luis Valley Great Outdoors and the Wilderness Society.

The committee supporting the bill — called — received most of its funding from large national nonprofits, including the Nature Conservancy, the Trust for Public Land and . One of the heirs of the Walmart fortune and his wife, Tom and Olivia Walton, have also chipped in.

A few times a week, I reach into the deep freezer for locally sourced beef, fish, or game meat. I’m grateful for the nourishment deer, elk, antelope, and wild fowl provide and for the hunter friends who donate the meat. One of several reasons I am voting for the is to protect the ability of these Colorado hunters and anglers to put meat on the supper table.

Colorado’s 300,000 hunters and 950,000 anglers don’t just provide sustenance for their families and friends; they benefit the state in other ways. In addition to providing $3.25 billion in economic impact and support for thousands of jobs, hunting and fishing fund wildlife conservation through licenses, tags, and taxes, and help the state manage wild animal populations.

Without management, game species are vulnerable to starvation and disease – nature’s way of population control. The initiative does not forbid the use of secondary management tools like relocation and birth control; it just ensures that hunting and fishing remain the preferred means of responsible management.

In fact, the initiative does not limit the authority of Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) or the General Assembly to regulate hunting and fishing “for sound scientific wildlife conservation and management, public safety, or to preserve the future of hunter and fishing opportunities for all species statewide.” They will continue to determine seasons, number of licenses and other licensing requirements and safety guidelines. Trespassing on private property or the hunting of non-game species, endangered species, or any species prohibited by federal law will still be illegal.

Colorado isn’t the only state considering adopting such an amendment at this time. The Oregon Attorney General began drafting a similar initiative after voters turned in the requisite number of signatures. Earlier this year, activists threatened to introduce a measure to criminalize hunting and fishing.

While activists have not threatened to directly eliminate fishing and hunting, groups representing sportsmen and women in Colorado are worried the CPW Commission, the governor-appointed citizen board that oversees the agency’s policies over parks and wildlife, could favor activists’ interests in the future over those of hunters and fishermen and women depending on who is appointed.

During the last session, a Colorado Senate committee refused to confirm two of the governor’s appointees to the sportsmen-designated seats because of such concerns. What will happen if the chamber doesn’t do its due diligence next time? A constitutional amendment is needed to ensure that Colorado fishermen and women and hunters continue to have a seat at the table.

Rick Enstrom, who served eight years on the CPW commission and three terms as chairman, told me he is concerned: “Generations of families that hunt and fish for enjoyment and sustenance have been backed into a corner by nameless, faceless political newcomers opposed to this traditional lifestyle.”

My friend is voting for the amendment not just to preserve the tradition of hunting and fishing for the future, but to maintain funding provided by hunters and anglers for conservation, and to ensure “wildlife in Colorado is properly managed by biologists and professionals.”

I will be joining him. Some of my fondest childhood memories with my dad are of hunting pheasant and fishing for trout. I, too, want to ensure the next generation will have the same opportunities. In the meantime, this amendment will protect me, even though I neither hunt or fish (I’m terrible at it), as I ditch factory farms for ethical and sustainable sources of sustenance.

Krista Kafer is a Sunday Denver Post columnist.

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Candidates had two weeks to gather 300 signatures to land on the ballot. Since the Aug. 20 deadline, the clerk’s office has been working to verify those signatures and determine whether each of the 19 initial candidates had sufficient signatures. As of Friday, the field was set.

are Jake Browne, Cynthia Diaz, Raymon Anthony Doane, Gabriel Konkle, Monica Martinez, Melissa Mejia, Alfredo Reyes, Julissa Soto, Whitney Traylor and Jeff Walker.

Five candidates who initially filed to run ultimately didn’t submit signatures. The clerk’s office found that three who filed petitions didn’t have sufficient signatures. One candidate withdrew.

Unlike the city’s 11 other council members, those in the two at-large seats represent the entire city as opposed to a geographic district. This election will be unusual because the winner will serve only about six months before the seat is up for reelection in April.

And the two elections’ outcomes will be determined in different ways. That’s because in 2025, voters approved a change to at-large elections. In the past, all the candidates for the at-large seats have appeared under one question, with voters choosing two. The winners have been the top two vote-getters, even if they received only a slim plurality of the votes cast.

Under the 2025 change, the seats in the regular election next year will be split into two separate positions, “At-large A” and “At-large B.” For candidates to win either seat, they must receive more than 50% of the vote in that race, or else a runoff election will take place.

But the Nov. 3 special election will use the old plurality system, meaning that whoever gets the most votes wins.

Here’s what we know so far about the candidates:

• Jake Browne was a marijuana critic for The Denver Post and has written for Westword.
• Cynthia Diaz is the owner of Tonantzin Casa de Café on Santa Fe Drive.
• Gabriel Konkle is a software architect.
• Monica Martinez is the executive director of the Fax Partnership, a nonprofit group based on East Colfax Avenue.
• Melissa Mejía, a former policy council aide for Councilwoman Jamie Torres, also previously worked as the head of state and local policy for the Community Economic Defense Project. She is supported by progressive politicians like state Sen. Julie Gonzales and state Rep. Javier Mabrey. (Torres has endorsed Monica Martinez)
• Alfredo Reyes is the former executive director of the Latino Cultural Arts Center and has served on the Denver Citizen Oversight Board, the Commission on Cultural Affairs and the Mayor’s River Sisters Advisory Committee. He has the support of former at-large Councilwoman Debbie Ortega.
• Whitney Traylor is the managing principal at Traylor Law Group.
• Julissa Soto is a public health advocate and the founder of Julissa Soto Latino Health Equity Consulting.
• Jeff Walker is an infrastructure and housing advocate who has served on the Regional Transportation District’s elected board. He also unsuccessfully ran for an at-large seat in 2023, finishing eighth among 10 candidates.
• Raymon Anthony Doane does not appear to have a campaign website but listed “Amazon” as one of his employers on his campaign filing.

The deal, formally announced Thursday morning, averts the fight at the ballot box this fall.�� The agreement includes proposed legislation to be pursued early next year as well as a 2027 ballot measure that will ask voters to approve potentially billions of dollars for roads over the next decade. The deal was first reported by The Denver Post.

Attorney General Phil Weiser, the Democratic nominee for governor, was credited with helping push the deal over the finish line — setting up the prospect of a major legislative win before the general election is over.

“This is the type of bold strategy and commitment that Coloradans wanted and need,” said Jeff Keller, a co-chair of the Restore Our Roads Coalition, the group pushing the ballot amendment, in a statement. “It goes beyond what the ballot measure contemplated, both in the level of revenue it will produce and in its ability to address the major roads and bridges projects that have been ignored for too long.”

He added: “Our goal has always been to give Colorado taxpayers a voice in how the taxes and fees they pay for transportation are used. And now they finally will.”

has had heavy backing from the construction industry, including the Colorado Contractors Association and the Colorado Construction Industry Coalition. If it were to stay on the ballot and pass, it would require the state to spend some $2 billion per year, including $540 million from the general fund, on road transportation projects.

It would require taxes and fees the state collects on motor vehicles, fuel and parts to be spent specifically on road transportation — and was formulated as a way to push back against lawmakers’ budgeting of some of that money for transit and other uses in recent years.

State Rep. Andrew Boesenecker, one of the top Democrats in the House and a negotiator on the package, spoke about the deal on a call with fellow legislative Democrats Thursday morning. He said the emerging package would include legislation that could earmark as much as $120 million for roadway repair, without cutting into the general fund.

The exact details of how the legislature will pay for the proposal, along with the details of the 2027 ballot measure, will be worked out in coming months and during the normal legislative process early next year.

Its passage would hinge on the dealmakers winning election in November, when Democrats are favored to retain control of the legislature and the governor’s office. Weiser is running in the governor’s race against Republican Victor Marx and other candidates.

Boesenecker called the framework a “proactive and, I think, responsible path forward that addresses a core concern in our state.”

He said legislative leaders never disagreed that the state needed to do better on road maintenance, but he had problems with how the proposed constitutional amendment would have paid for its goal. This new process, he said, ensures a variety of stakeholders will be able to shape the final product.

“Because we were able to convene the conversation over the last several months, bring the right folks to the table, and have an honest and good-faith discussion on the challenge people face in regard to roadway maintenance in Colorado, we were able to come together — as opposed to being on the opposite sides of the table,” Boesenecker said.

The different sides were able to strike the deal with about a week until the deadline to pull initiatives from the state ballot.

As a constitutional amendment, Initiative 175 would have needed 55% of the vote to pass in November.

The ballot measure had faced fierce pushback from Democrats in the legislature, where the party holds nearly 2-to-1 majorities. They argued the amendment would, in effect, gut spending on other state priorities by requiring the road spending even as the government likely grapples with another massive budget deficit.

In the waning days of this year’s legislative session in the spring, lawmakers pushed through a bill designed to all but neutralize the amendment, even if voters were to approve it in the fall.

At the time, lawmakers had hoped to force the Restore Our Roads Coalition to withdraw its ballot measure in exchange for more talks on a legislative solution, a gambit that the coalition rejected at the time. That legislation would delay the bulk of the amendment’s impact from being felt for only three years, according to the coalition — a period of time the group was willing to wait out.

“I’m grateful that the Initiative 175 proponents were willing to collaborate and find a path forward — one that will produce a ballot measure that we can all get behind,” Weiser said in a statement. “The agreement we reached today will meaningfully fund our transportation system and protect scarce resources for other critical services. Only when we listen to each other can we find common ground.”

Gov. Jared Polis, who is term-limited and in his last year in office, also heralded the deal — while highlighting how roads have improved under his administration. In a news release, his office cited Colorado Department of Transportation data showing that more interstate pavement is in “good” condition than it was three years ago, up to 50.6% compared to 42.8%, and less is in “poor” condition.

The high court on Monday rejected a challenge from 23 states, including Colorado, that sought to stop Trump’s March executive order restricting mail voting. The court did not give Trump final approval for his attempt to exert federal control over mail-in voting, however. Instead, a majority of justices, in an unsigned order, decided that the states could not prove harm from the executive order, and thus had no standing to sue — yet.

“Where we are right now, today, nothing has changed,” Griswold said Tuesday in an interview, referring to the Nov. 3 general election. “But there is this ongoing fight that is evolving.”

The decision was the latest development in just one of several ongoing fights over the executive order. In another case, a separate court decision . This week’s ruling is also expected to be a precursor to more legal fights. (On Wednesday morning, after this story was published, Colorado joined 24 other states to sue the Trump administration again. The suit argues that the implementation of new rules proposed by the administration would hurt states’ ability to conduct their own elections. The Supreme Court’s ruling had allowed that rulemaking to continue.)

And with less than 70 days before Election Day — and just over a month before county clerks start mailing ballots to Colorado voters — it����ap not clear what changes would even be feasible.

Griswold said it would be “extraordinarily hard for states to change the voting processes,” even if the Trump administration were somehow successful. The U.S. Constitution holds that states oversee their own elections, though Trump’s challenge has no precedent.

“Ultimately, I can’t foresee or predict what the courts will say,” Griswold said. She noted that mail voting remains overwhelmingly popular among Coloradans of all political stripes, with more than 95% of voters casting their ballots that way. “I am optimistic, and I hope they squarely plant themselves on the right side of history.”

Still, the Trump administration heralded the ruling.

“This is a major win for the security of American elections,” Lauren Bis, a spokesperson for the White House, said in a statement. “These are commonsense measures that protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans are electing American leaders. This Administration will continue to lawfully enact the agenda President Trump was elected on — which includes the safety and security of our elections.”

As it stands now, Colorado ballots must go out to overseas voters by Sept. 19. County clerks can start sending ballots to most other voters Oct. 2, about a month before the election. Regular ballots must be returned by 7 p.m. on Election Day.

In his , Trump sought to create a national voter list that the federal government could use to determine people’s eligibility to vote by mail. Part of that would be overseen by the U.S. Postal Service, which on Friday to carry out that task. They require specific formatting for envelopes containing mail ballots and say states must use an electronic system to identify to the Postal Service who is voting by mail. If states don’t comply, their mail ballots wouldn’t get sent.

Andrew Garber, an attorney with the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, said those rules will almost certainly set the stage for the states to continue their challenge. Garber is one of the lawyers representing the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts in a separate legal challenge to the executive order.

That case resulted in the still-active injunction halting the implementation of the executive order.

“The president still has no authority to determine who gets to vote by mail,” Garber said of the current landscape. “And the U.S. Postal Service is still legally required to deliver the mail.”

The fate of the executive order remains to be seen, even if Garber and others are confident that Trump overstepped his authority. He said any attempt to outright cancel mail-in voting would be an “impossible needle to thread.”

Instead, he warned of mass confusion and worried about “rushed, flawed implementation” if the new rules were allowed to proceed. The Postal Service isn’t designed to gatekeep which voters can receive ballots — and trying to force a new system in place with only a month before voters start to receive ballots is a recipe for chaos, he said.

The ongoing, multifront legal fight — with multiple cases in multiple stages of litigation — also carries its own risk of confusing and disenfranchising voters, he said.

“It’s fair to say right now (that the fight over mail ballots is) more smoke than fire,” Garber said. “With the caveat that smoke is still really harmful.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story.