Colorado has two separate forms of government. The first, with which we are quite familiar, consists of the governor and the state legislature operating in the State Capitol Building in Denver. It is a representative form of government, with the governor and the state legislators being elected to represent the voters.

The second form of government in Colorado is the state ballot issues we vote on every two years at the November general election. We just finished voting on the eleven ballot issues for 2020. This process, however, is not representative government. It is direct democracy, and whatever the voters adopt becomes the law of the state.

Instead of operating out in full public view, as the governor and state legislators do, those who control the ballot issues portion of Colorado government mainly work out of public sight. We therefore call voting on ballot issues the “Nameless-Faceless” portion of Colorado state government. We are rarely told the names or see photographs of those who draw up the ballot issues, pay people to get the signatures needed to put the issues on our ballots, and then raise and spend the money to get the ballot issues approved by the voters.

That contrasts with elected state officials, such as our state legislators and governor, who publicly run for office, are clearly identified with political parties and major political issues, and have to cast public record votes for legislation or, in the case of the governor, issue well-publicized vetoes of legislative bills.

We are particularly concerned that, in some instances, money contributed to support or oppose ballot issues is hidden from public identification. The influence of this “dark money” is particularly troubling when it comes from outside the state of Colorado.

The state legislators and the governor are forced to live within a state budget and balance that state budget. They have to do the painful job of voting to raise revenues (pass tax increases) and then make state expenditures fit within the limits of those state revenues. This puts a limit on new ideas and programs for the state legislature. Many good ideas are dropped because “there is no money to pay for them.”

No such fiscal and budgetary limits exist where ballot issues government is concerned. Attractive and expensive new programs can be adopted by the voters and the state legislature has to find the money to pay for them. This happened in the 2020 general election when Colorado voters, by a generous margin, created a statewide Medical Leave Program to pay for time off from work for pregnancies and sick family members. Although the program is supposedly self-financing, the legislature will have to pay for any operating deficits.

Also under ballot issues government, the voters can cut taxes and not have to worry, as the state legislators and governor have to do, about the effect on the state budget. This also just happened in the 2020 election, when Colorado voters lowered state income tax rates and thereby reduced state revenues. It is our state legislators, not the voters, who will have to undertake the unpleasant task of cutting out vitally needed state programs to pay for the voters’ tax cut.

We also think the state Title Board should do a better job of simplifying and shortening the “ballot titles” that voters read just before voting on ballot issues. We found the ballot titles on some of the financial issues to be unclear and complex and sometimes outright misleading.

The ballot issues portion of Colorado state government is mainly biased toward liberal issues and against conservative issues, although there are exceptions. Our recent study of ballot issue voting found that, when voting on ballot issues, Colorado voters break down into four major groups:

1. Most Liberal: Denver, Boulder, the skiing counties in the Rocky Mountains.

2. Somewhat Liberal: Close-in Denver suburbs (Adams, Arapahoe, Broomfield, and Jefferson counties) plus Larimer County (Fort Collins).

3. Somewhat Conservative: Douglas County (Castle Rock), El Paso County (Colorado Springs), Mesa County (Grand Junction), and Weld County (Greeley).

4. Most Conservative: Under-populated rural-agricultural counties on the Eastern Plains and the Western Slope.

Anyone who knows Colorado can see that the most voters live in the highly populated Most Liberal and Somewhat Liberal groups. On a high number of ballot issues votes, the election returns show Denver and the Denver suburbs enforcing their liberal viewpoints on outlying counties and rural-agricultural counties that are much more conservative.

Of the eleven ballot issues decided by Colorado voters in 2020, seven essentially boiled down to the more urbanized parts of the state enforcing their will on the rural-agricultural counties.

A case in point was the ballot issues vote in 2020 on reintroducing gray wolves into Colorado. It was a major issue in the low population rural-agricultural counties because wolves tend to kill and devour calves and lambs. It was a close vote statewide, but liberal voters in Denver Metro (where no gray wolves will be introduced) succeeded in forcing gray wolves into Colorado despite solid opposition from the rural-agricultural counties.

We think Colorado is getting a national reputation for being a state where liberal reforms will be readily adopted at the ballot box by Colorado’s electorate. Out-of-state issue-oriented foundations and liberal advocacy groups have plenty of money to spend to pay petition signature gatherers as well as pay for issue campaign advertisements. These out-of-state foundations and advocacy groups are probably preparing right now to try to get their particular liberal causes adopted by Colorado voters in 2022.

As mentioned earlier, in most cases, the out-of-state operatives planning to do this will be essentially nameless and faceless to Colorado voters. The sources of their “dark money” will be unknown.