Normal Person Guide to Colorado Election 2022

I’m a Colorado freelance writer, a fast typist, and a bit of a know it all, so I thought I would take a few minutes this morning to crank out the Normal Person’s Guide to the 2022 Colorado Election ballot initiatives.

By now, or very soon, you should receive the 2022 State Ballot Information Booklet. As a neutral, legally sufficient document, it can be a dry read and confusing as to exactly what is going on. This is because lawyers craft this thing in committee, and then, special interest groups and politicians get their hands on it. I won’t tell you how to vote, but I’ll give you the straight up information about what you are voting on so you can get back to getting your yard ready for fall, going leaf viewing, or waxing up your skis.

Amendment D: New 23rd Judicial District Judges

This is one of those worthless amendments that they have to make for legal reasons but doesn’t matter one bit to you or me. Colorado grew, so there is a new congressional district, and a new judicial district. It doesn’t matter why. Some judges in the new 23rd District used to be in another district before the 23rd was created. This just moves those judges over to the 23rd so it can get started.

I know I said I wasn’t going to tell you how to vote, but there is basically no reason to vote against this.

Amendment E: Extend Homestead Exemption

You may or may not know this, but certain people, senior citizens, and disabled military veterans mostly, get a certain amount off their property taxes each year. Amendment E expands to include so-called Gold Star spouses.

Amendment F: Changes to Charitable Gaming Operations

All right let’s start from the beginning. Right now, in Colorado charitable organizations can run Bingo/Raffle games for money. It’s basically small-time legalized gambling. To keep it from getting misused, the current law requires that the non-profit must run for 5 years before it can do it. Also, since it is all charity, supposedly, they cannot pay the people who run the Bingo.

This changes the rules to the non-profit only having to be 3 years old, and they can pay the people that run the bingo/raffle things. There is a cap, but it’s only for 2024 and then you can pay them whatever you want.

Propositions

Propositions differ from amendments in that they can be changed in the future by the usual state government pathway: State Congress to Governor to Law. — This is better in most cases and only takes 50% to pass instead of 55% for amendments.

Proposition FF: Healthy School Meals for All

Remember how all the kids got free school lunches during the two pandemic years? This puts back free school meals for everybody instead of only for people who have a low income.

It gets paid for by increasing taxes on people with adjusted gross incomes higher than $300,000.

Proposition GG: Add Tax Information Table to Petitions and Ballots

To put stuff (like Proposition GG) on the ballot, you have to get a certain number of signatures on petitions. Right now, the petition doesn’t have to spell out the taxes, instead that is in the Colorado Blue Book.

Basically, they want something like this to be on the petitions that people sign.

Proposition 121: State Income Tax Rate Reduction

Right now, you pay 4.55% in state income taxes in Colorado. If this passes, you will pay 4.40% in state income taxes in Colorado. If you make $100,000 a year, this will save you around $130 each year.

As always, if you cut taxes, you cut some of the things the State can do.

Proposition 122: Access to Natural Psychedelic Substances

Remember how marijuana got legalized? First, they said it was only for medical purposes, and then they said, “You know what? Let’s just make it for everyone.” This is the same thing. This is step one for mushrooms. Medical ‘shrooms only to start. If you like the idea of legalized ‘shrooms vote yes, if not, no.

Proposition 123: Dedicate Revenue for Affordable Housing Projects

Okay. This one does a few things so strap in.

First is requires the state to spend 0.1 percent on affordable housing programs. Second it exempts the amount spent on this from Tabor.

So, if the state does not collect enough taxes to go over the Tabor limit, there is no change in your state income taxes, but the state still has to spend 0.1 percent of whatever they collected on affordable housing.

On the other hand, if the state tax collection does go over the Tabor limit, then this amount doesn’t count. So, this would keep your taxes the same, but lower whatever Tabor refund you would have gotten by the amount spent on affordable housing.

Proposition 124: Increase Allowable Liquor Store Locations

Not too long ago only stand-alone liquor stores could carry anything other than 3.2 percent beer. The people of Colorado got fed up with special interests constantly defeating changes to that law and did it themselves with a ballot initiative a few years ago.

Now, grocery stores and drug stores can have up to 8 liquor store locations. That number keeps going up until after January 1, 2037, when the limit goes away altogether.

Since the liquor store people were against expanding liquor licenses to drugstores and grocery stores, they were not included. So, under current law, the limit for retail liquor store licenses is three. It goes to four in 2027 and stays that way forever. This law changes the limit to be the same as for drug stores and grocery stores.

Proposition 125: Allow Grocery and Convenience Stores to Sell Wine

This one is pretty self-explanitory. Right now, you can only sell beer in grocery and convenience stores (except for a few stores as outlined in 124). If this passes then everyone who can sell beer can also sell wine and wine-like stuff like sake, but not actual liquor like gin, vodka, whiskey, and tequila.

Proposition 126: Third-Party Delivery of Alcohol Beverages

Remember during the pandemic when they decided that restaurants could deliver alcoholic beverages with your food? You could get mimosas from Snooze and a pitcher of margaritas from your favorite Mexican restaurant.

You probably didn’t notice, but that was only allowed if the delivery driver worked for the restaurant. This would allow the same thing but with third-party drivers. In this case, third-party basically means DoorDash, and Grubhub and those companies.

Vote 2022 Colorado Election

Remember, Colorado decided over a decade ago to have really free and open elections without making people wait in huge lines. If you are registered to vote in Colorado, your ballot will show up in the mail. You can mail it back, drop it off at a drop box or election location. You can even go vote in person and throw your mailed ballot away. You cannot vote by mail and in person, obviously.

Be sure to vote this fall… or don’t. If you don’t care enough to vote, then we don’t care enough to worry about your opinion. It’s as simple as that.