With ballots landing in Colorado mailboxes this week, we are re-running Logan’s ballot initiative guide, which now includes a recommendation on ballot measure 7A, which will appear on Front Range ballots.

Corporate giveaways, climate denialism, naked bigotry, and other bad ideas. By volume, those are the suggestions which will constitute the bulk of Colorado’s November ballot. As I’ve spent the last several weeks writing about, this year marks only the second time in state history that voters have had to contend with as many as 14 initiatives on a single ballot, and most of them are more a product of astroturf than grassroots. 

Eight of those 14 were put there by conservative group Advance Colorado — unlike actual citizen-initiated ballot measures, the group is willing to pay a few million dollars a pop for paid canvassers to beg, borrow, and steal their ideas onto the ballot — and another three were put there by anti-trans organization Protect Kids Colorado (which is currently facing a campaign finance complaint for failing to disclose the extent to which it paid canvassers to put its ideas on the ballot). That leaves three.

Initially, my intention was to dedicate this week’s column to those final three, two of which are roundly deserving of a yes vote and the third of which appears to be a toss-up, in that nobody I have spoken to has a particularly strong opinion for or against it. That original intention, however, has come up against two factors which have caused me to reconsider dedicating an entire column to the final three. The first factor? I really don’t think my regular readers are the kind of Coloradans who need to be convinced to support a graduated income tax or school funding. The second factor, though, is a bit more pressing: ballots will begin arriving in the mail within a week. With time short, I have decided to include my recommendations for those remaining three initiatives not as a standalone piece, but as part of this, my final, comprehensive ballot guide. 

Without further ado: the 2026 Muckraker Ballot Guide. 

Supported by: Advance Colorado

Opposed by: League of Women Voters of Colorado, Rocky Mountain Equality, Indivisible Colorado

Links:

• My column covering Amendment 81
• Full text of Amendment 81

Supported by: Advance Colorado

Opposed by: Conservation Colorado, Colorado Fund for Children & Public Education, Western Resource Advocates, AFSCME, Cobalt Foundation, and Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition

Links:

• My column covering Amendment 82
• Full text of Amendment 82

Supported by: Advance Colorado; International Order of T. Roosevelt

Opposed by: Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, Colorado Hunters & Anglers for Sensible Wildlife Conservation, ColoradoWild, Sierra Club Colorado, Western Watersheds Project, Wildlife for All, and more

Links:

• My column covering Amendment 83
• Full text of Amendment 83

Supported by: Advance Colorado, Coalition for American Prosperity & Growth

Opposed by: League of Women Voters of Colorado, Colorado Common Cause, Defend Our Ballots

Links:

• My column covering Amendment 84
• Full text of Amendment 84

Note: There is an ongoing effort specifically to convince Democratic voters that this initiative should be passed. In addition to the arguments which have already been marshaled against it, I’ll encourage you to ask yourself one, single question: if Amendment 85 were in keeping with progressive interests, why would Advance Colorado spend millions of dollars to support it? If you answered, “they wouldn’t,” you are correct. Anyone suggesting otherwise is selling something.

Supported by: Advance Colorado

Opposed by: League of Women Voters of Colorado, Democratic Party of Colorado, Boulder Progressives

Links:

• My column covering Amendment 85
• Full text of Amendment 85

Supported by: Advance Colorado

Opposed by: No formal opposition

Links:

• My column covering Amendment 86
• Full text of Amendment 86

Supported by: Conservation Colorado, New Era, Great Education Colorado, Colorado Center on Law and Policy, Colorado Statewide Parent Coalition, COLOR, Colorado Consumer Health Initiative, Colorado Cross Disability Coalition, Bell Policy Center, Colorado Fiscal Institute, Colorado PTA, COWINS, and more

Opposed by: Advance Colorado, Americans for Prosperity Colorado

Links:

• Bell Policy Center’s write-up of Amendment 87
• Full text of Amendment 87

Supported by: Colorado Education Association, Colorado Fund for Children & Public Education

Opposed by: Advance Colorado

Links:

• Bell Policy Center’s write-up of Proposition NN
• Full text of Proposition NN

Supported by: Advance Colorado

Opposed by: League of Women Voters of Colorado, Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, Signal Behavioral Health Network, Indivisible Colorado

Links:

• My column covering Proposition 132
• Full text of Proposition 132

Supported by: Protect Kids Colorado

Opposed by: Families Not Politics, Vote Common Sense, Indivisible Colorado

Links:

• My column covering Proposition 133
• Full text of Proposition 133

Supported by: Protect Kids Colorado, Focus on the Family

Opposed by: Families Not Politics, Inside Out Youth Services, Interfaith Alliance, One Colorado, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, Rocky Mountain Equality, Indivisible Colorado, and more

Links:

• My column covering Proposition 134
• Full text of Proposition 134

Supported by: Protect Kids Colorado, Focus on the Family

Opposed by: Families Not Politics, Inside Out Youth Services, Interfaith Alliance, One Colorado, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, Rocky Mountain Equality, Indivisible Colorado, and more

Links:

• My column covering Proposition 135
• Full text of Proposition 135

Supported by: Advance Colorado

Opposed by: Vote Common Sense

Links:

• My column covering Proposition 136
• Full text of Proposition 136

Note: From what I can tell, Proposition 137 sounds like a decent measure. However, there are a great number of fantastically smart people whose opinions I seek on these matters, and none of them have a particularly strong opinion on Proposition 137. Amid a slate of initiatives designed to deface the state, Proposition 137 seems unobjectionable, but also raises questions about placing limitations on our duly-elected legislators’ ability to budget.

Supported by: Conservation Colorado, The Nature Conservancy, Trust for Public Land, Environmental Defense Fund, The Wilderness Society, NRDC Action Fund, Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, Denver Water and the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, and more

Opposed by: Clean Energy Action, ColoradoWild, Eco-Integrity Alliance, League of Women Voters of Colorado, and more

Links:

• Bell Policy Center on Proposition 137
• Full text of Proposition 137

Note: 7A will only appear on ballots in Adams, Arapahoe, Broomfield, Boulder, Denver, Douglas, El Paso, Huerfano, Jefferson, Larimer, Las Animas, Pueblo, and Weld Counties.

Supported by: Local governments along the Front Range, including the city councils of Broomfield, Longmont, and Loveland

Opposed by: The Independence Institute

Links:

• Colorado Public Radio on measure 7A
• Full text of measure 7A