With a multi-page ballot this fall, featuring 10 statewide ballot issues, the Steamboat Pilot & Today Editorial Board is using today’s Our View space to offer our positions on five of those measures – Amendments Y and Z, Amendment 73, Amendment 74 and Proposition 112.

Vote ‘yes’ on Y and Z

In this day and age of intensely partisan bickering, Amendments Y and Z, which propose to establish a new process for congressional and state legislative redistricting, sound almost too good to be true. The bipartisan measure would reward unaffiliated voters and nonpartisan staffers, and it would be locally beneficial, aligning districts with geographically similar traits and interests.

In a nutshell, Y and Z limit the role of partisan politics in the redistricting process by transferring the task to an independent commission and creating a stronger check and balance system. The proposed initiatives also aim to make elections more competitive, which we believe has the potential to produce more centrist candidates.

Read more at Steamboat Pilot & Today.