Colorado is decided, mostly. Democrats carried what they needed to retain control of the General Assembly. Republicans have some breathtaking squeakers with two GOPers in the state Senate, Bob Rankin and Kevin Priola, hanging on, according to unofficial results.

Pueblo County has turned into a tossup between Democrats and Republicans as it didn’t produce enough Democratic votes for Diane Mitsch Bush to win. Republican Lauren Boebert took the CD-3 race. Boebert will have an interesting time adjusting to Washington, D.C.

The ballot issues, as always, create a certain amount of havoc. Most decidedly, women will retain their right to make their own medical decisions, at 59% NO to 41% YES on proposition 115. The family leave initiative, which couldn’t get through the state Senate last session, passed handily, 57% YES to 43% NO. The large vote among women helped these results.

Some in the business community may not like the results of the family leave initiative, but the repeal of the “Gallagher Amendment” that sets property tax ratios between business and residential property looks like it will surpass the 55% threshold on constitutional changes. The business community may see a reduction in its property taxes and residences may see a rise.

Coloradans’ views on games of chance and raffles are baffling. Constitutional Amendment 77 allows gaming communities to set maximum bet amounts and add games to their casinos. The amendment easily surpassed the 55% threshold at 59% YES. But for some indecipherable reason, the charitable bingo Amendment C couldn’t get to 55% YES. So bingo raffle licensees will not pay bingo managers and operators and bingo licenses won’t be extended to charities unless they’ve been in business for five years.

Republicans can claim two money victories. Income taxes will go down a bit and legislators will have to go to voters for approval of state enterprises generating more than $100 million in fees.

So far, results show that Proposition 113 to accept national presidential vote results will pass. SB19-042 to join the national agreement among states on presidential elections passed both chambers at the capitol last year. Proposition 113 would cancel that legislative decision.

Let’s review this initiative as the issue is currently in play in front of our very own eyes. The Electoral College was set up to protect southern states of the original 13 colonies from losing elections. Southern state populations were low related to citizens but high related to population when 3/5 of slaves were included in census counts. These lower union states insisted on the Electoral College to protect slavery. That sets the terms on the morality of this particular constitutional originalism.

The argument against changing to a national popular-vote presidential election is that New Yorkers and Californians would dominate these voting decisions. Pro-electoral college people apparently prefer miniscule vote differences between the two parties in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Florida to decide who’s president. Oh, to be a U.S. citizen in any one of these states and know that only your votes really matter in selecting the most powerful person on earth! After all, the rest of us get to sit by and watch excruciating vote counts in Buck County, Pennsylvania.

It’s these happy citizens who will decide whether environmental rules are enforced, current health care systems will survive, carbon and other emissions will be controlled, taxing will go up or down, immigration reform will occur, the nation will engage in wars, businesses will survive the COVID virus, and students will get educated and afford college, among many other important concerns.

Pro-electoral college individuals seemingly enjoy the confusion, litigation, and overall mess brought on by this antiquated voting mechanism in a country that no longer has slavery, where all citizens – whether they have property or not and whether they’re white or not – can vote.

Indeed, Amendment 76 that passed resoundingly with 63% of Colorado voters asserts affirmatively that to vote in any Colorado election, a person simply must be a United States citizen. This amendment to our state constitution represented by the Republican Party should be sufficient to ensure that Coloradans have every single one of their votes count exactly as much as every other US citizen’s vote counts. When we drop our ballots into those boxes, we should have that guarantee.