Author: Blair Miller
Voters pass Amendment 71, which will alter the process for changing Colorado’s constitution
DENVER – Colorado voters on Tuesday passed an amendment that will require any proposed amendment to the state constitution be signed off on by voters in each of the state’s 35 Senate districts.
The measure, Amendment 71, passed with 57 percent approval as of 12:22 a.m. Wednesday, when 73 percent of state votes had been reported.
Instead of being able to collect the required number of signatures from anywhere in the state, proponents of a measure to add a constitutional amendment will have to get signatures from at least 2 percent of the total number of registered voters in each of Colorado’s 35 Senate districts.
For instance, District 35 is comprised of 16 counties in southeastern Colorado and has 88,962 registered voters. Under an approved Amendment 71, 1,779 signatures would have to be gathered on a ballot drive and approved for the measure to go on November’s ballot.
The amendment won’t change the process for drives to change state statutes, only the constitution.
Currently, any constitutional amendment approved by 50 percent, plus one vote, of voters in an election will become law.
But now that Amendment 71 has been approved, that threshold will be raised to require any constitutional amendment be approved by 55 percent of voters.
That change wouldn’t apply to the repeal of an amendment – only to changes to the constitution. In the case of a repeal, a simple majority vote would remain the threshold for approval.
Read more about the measure here.
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Colorado voters approve $12 minimum wage hike by 2020
DENVER – Colorado voters on Tuesday approved a proposed amendment that will increase the state’s minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2020.
The measure, Amendment 70, had 55 percent support with 64 percent of Colorado reporting as of 10 p.m.
Amendment 70 would change the state constitution to increase the statewide minimum wage to $9.30 per hour starting Jan. 1, then raise it every year by $0.90 per hour until it reaches $12 an hour by Jan. 1, 2020.
State law mandates tipped workers make $3.02 less than the state minimum wage, and by 2020, the tipped worker minimum wage would rise to $8.98 per hour.
Currently, the Colorado minimum wage is set at $8.31 per hour for most workers and $5.29 per hour for tipped workers.
Voters approved a $6.85 per hour minimum wage in 2006 that included a provision that it be adjusted yearly in comparison to movement in the state’s consumer price index (CPI) – which measures the changes in prices of the statewide prices of goods and services each year.
The wage was increased to $6.85 per hour from $5.15 per hour. It has since gone up every year, except for in 2010, when it dropped by 4 cents an hour.
The current federal minimum wage is set at $7.25 per hour for non-tipped workers and $2.13 per hour for tipped workers.
State law forbids cities from setting a higher minimum wage than the state’s.
Starting in 2021, the minimum wage would again be tied back to the CPI, though Amendment 70 would change the constitution to prevent a decrease in the minimum wage if the cost of living falls.
WHAT AMENDMENT 70 DOES FOR NON-TIPPED WORKERS
For non-tipped workers, who comprise most of Colorado’s workforce, the minimum wage will rise incrementally over the next three-plus years:
- 2016: $8.31 per hour
- 2017: $9.30 per hour
- 2018: $10.20 per hour
- 2019: $11.10 per hour
- 2020: $12 per hour
Under current rules, a recent economic forecast projects the minimum wage to be around $9.18 per hour in 2020 if the amendment is not approved.
WHAT AMENDMENT 70 DOES FOR TIPPED WORKERS
For tipped workers, the rules get a little more complicated. Tipped wages will remain at $3.02 less than the wage for tipped workers, which put the wage at the following stages as it increases each year:
- 2016: $5.29 per hour
- 2017: $6.28 per hour
- 2018: $7.18 per hour
- 2019: $8.08 per hour
- 2020: $8.98 per hour
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Colorado’s voter turnout tops 2012 presidential election; Republicans double ballot submission lead
DENVER – Voter turnout in Colorado has already topped turnout in the 2012 presidential election, and Republicans doubled their voting lead over Democrats in the first half of Tuesday.
Unaffiliated and Republican voters in Colorado continued their strong turnout during Election Day, according to numbers released Tuesday afternoon by the Secretary of State’s Office. Continue reading
KNOW YOUR VOTE: Everything you need to know about Colorado’s ballot initiatives and voting
DENVER – On this Election Day, Colorado voters should only be dropping their ballots off at polling centers or county clerk’s offices at this point to be sure they are counted.
Click here to find your nearest polling center.
Coloradans can also track their ballot if it’s already been submitted. People statewide can track their ballot through the Secretary of State’s Office’s tool here. There are also local tracking tools for Denver County, Arapahoe County and Boulder County. Click on each respective county to be redirected to the ballot tracker site. Continue reading
Election 2016 live blog: Updates from Election Day in Colorado and nationwide
DENVER – Denver7 will update this live blog throughout Election Day and Wednesday with news from Colorado and across the nation. Post are in reverse-chronological order. For more, head over to our Election 2016 page. Continue reading
Colorado voters approve Proposition 106, ‘right-to-die’ ballot measure
DENVER – Colorado voters on Tuesday approved a “right-to-die” measure that would allow terminally ill people to receive medication that would end their lives.
With 50 percent of counties reporting, Proposition 106 had garnered 65 percent of the vote.
The proposition would change Colorado statutes to allow any “mentally-capable” adult aged 18+ with a diagnosed terminal illness that leaves them six months or less to live to receive a prescription from a licensed physician that can be taken voluntarily to end their life.
The person’s primary physician and a secondary physician would both have to confirm the person has six or fewer months to live, and would also have to be deemed mentally-capable enough to make the end-of-life decision by two physicians as well.
The change in statute would create immunity from civil or criminal lawsuits, as well as from professional discipline, for the physicians aiding the patient in dying. Under current law, those physicians face felony manslaughter charges for doing so.
But it would also be a class-2 felony for anyone to tamper with a request for the end-of-life medication or coerce a patient into making an end-of-life decision
Colorado is the fifth state to legalize similar measures. Oregon, California, Vermont and Washington already have similar laws on their books. Montana’s lawbooks leave the question open as to whether such measures are legal in the state.
Read more on Proposition 106 here.
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Colorado Republicans take 7,000 vote lead over Democrats in early voting day before Election Day
DENVER – With just two days of voting to go, Colorado’s registered Republicans have taken a lead of about 7,300 ballot submissions over Democrats.
After Democrats led the tally for much of the first two weeks of the early-voting period, registered Republicans started making up the difference late last week and took a small lead by Friday night.
Over the weekend and Friday, Republicans turned in 104,605 ballots, compared to 90,680 from Democrats and 98,439 from unaffiliated voters.
The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office updates the number of ballots returned via mail and votes made in-person each day, and breaks down the votes by which party each person who submitted a ballot is registered for.
Every ballot is categorized by each voter’s registration and does not say how a person voted. Colorado law allowed county clerks to start counting ballots on Oct. 24.
The county clerk’s offices open the ballots, check their signatures to validate them, and scan the results. However, the results will not be tallied or released until after the polls close on Nov. 8.
As of the Secretary of State’s Monday morning tally, Republicans had submitted 652,380 ballots (35.2 percent of total submissions); Democrats had turned in 645,020 ballots (34.8 percent of total submissions) and unaffiliated voters had turned in 527,706 ballots (28.5 of total submissions).
The 1,852,029 ballots returned so far represent about 56.6 percent of registered active voters in Colorado as of numbers released Nov. 1 by the Secretary of State’s Office.
In 2012’s presidential election, which did not utilize an all-mail ballot system as this year’s does, saw a 71 percent turnout in Colorado.
When comparing the number of ballots submitted so far by each party to the number of active registered voters in each party, the latest tallies show Republicans have now overtaken Democrats in terms of the percentage of active voters who have submitted their ballot.
Voting turnout percentages by party registration now sit as follows: 62 percent for Colorado Democrats; 63.25 percent for Colorado Republicans and 46.25 percent for unaffiliated Colorado voters.
In Jefferson County, long considered a bell-weather in Colorado, Democrats (75,967) have submitted 1,000 more ballots than Republicans (74,969). Unaffiliated voters lag just behind, at 69,559 votes submitted so far.
Larimer County votes are almost nearly evenly-split as well: about 3,000 more Republicans have submitted ballots than Democrats, though there are about 9,000 more registered Republicans in the county.
And in Arapahoe County, where more unaffiliated voters are registered than Democrats or Republicans, Democrats and Republicans sit near-even in the percentage of voters registered to each party that have voted.
But overall statewide, unaffiliated voters still lag way behind Democrats and Republicans. Though they are the largest electorate in Colorado, unaffiliated voters have submitted at least 120,000 ballots less than either Republicans or Democrats.
Colorado polls released late last week showed Clinton held anywhere between a 3 and 6 percentage point lead over Trump in Colorado.
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Federal judge keeps Colorado ‘ballot selfie’ law on books but says AG, DA’s can’t prosecute
DENVER – A law prohibiting people from taking pictures of their completed ballots, or taking “ballot selfies,” will stay on Colorado’s law books, but the state’s attorney general and district attorneys won’t be allowed to charge anyone who does so.
A U.S. District Court of Colorado judge on Friday evening issued the order to enjoin both the Attorney General’s Office and Denver District Attorney’s Office from prosecuting or investigating violations of Colorado Revised Statute §1-13-712 unless it happens in connection with another crime – election-related or not. Continue reading
Niwot High School head football coach charged with assaulting student
BOULDER COUNTY, Colo. – The head football coach at Niwot High School faces charges after he allegedly choked and kneed a student in the groin for cursing in class last week.
Boulder County sheriff’s deputies arrested Dylan Hollingsworth, 43, of Longmont, Friday morning. He was booked on second-degree assault and third-degree assault charges. The first is a felony and the latter is a misdemeanor.
The alleged assault happened on Thursday, Oct. 27. Hollingsworth had allegedly taken issue with a 17-year-old student’s use of profanity in a weightlifting class, and warned his students that the next person who cursed would face punishment and “might possible be hit or kicked,” according to the sheriff’s office.
At some point shortly after the warning, according to the sheriff’s office, the 17-year-old student cursed while singing a song, to which Hollingsworth allegedly responded by applying “pressure to the student’s larynx, causing the student to struggle to breathe.”
Hollingsworth then allegedly kneed to the student in the groin. At some point, a school resource officer found out about the alleged assault and reported it.
After turning himself in Friday morning, Hollingsworth was booked and released. He is next due in court on Dec. 8.
The school did not comment on the matter only saying that it is a personnel issue and an ongoing investigation.
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Donald Trump will hold rally Saturday night in Denver amid last-minute blitz by both parties
DENVER – Donald Trump will hold a campaign rally in Denver Saturday night as the cherry on top of a busy week in Colorado politics filled with visits from both major campaigns.
Trump’s rally will start at 9:30 p.m. at the National Western Complex. Doors open at 6 p.m. Earlier Saturday, former New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani will stop by the Denver Trump campaign office at 1 p.m. He’ll have an open question-and-answer session directly afterward.
Trump’s visit comes after visits this week by Mike Pence, Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump Jr. and Chelsea Clinton.
Bill Clinton is campaigning for his wife, Hillary, Friday in Pueblo, Denver and Fort Collins, and Sen. Bernie Sanders is campaigning for Clinton and Morgan Carroll Saturday in Colorado Springs, Castle Rock and Aurora.
Former Republican candidate Ben Carson and Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin will campaign for Trump Friday in Colorado Springs and Aurora.
Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson also announced Friday he’ll be in Colorado this weekend; he will campaign at Colorado Christian University in Lakewood at 3 p.m. Sunday.
The blitz of Colorado by both campaigns comes as recent polls in Colorado show Clinton’s once-large gap has narrowed considerably in recent weeks.
A University of Denver poll released Wednesday showed the two in a dead heat in a four-way race and Clinton leading by one percentage point in a two-way race.
Thursday, Magellan Strategies released a poll showing Clinton up by six percentage points. Other polls have shown Clinton with a lead of anywhere between 1 and 3 percent in the state.
Early voting numbers released by the Colorado Secretary of State Friday show Republicans have also narrowed what had at one point been a near-30,000 vote lead by Republicans to about 7,000 votes.
Though those counts don’t show how a person voted, they do show that registered Democrats and Republicans have so far outpaced the state’s largest electorate base, unaffiliated voters, in early ballot submissions.
People wishing to sign up for tickets to the Trump rally can do so here.
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