Prepare to Vote: Our Faith Calls Us to Show Up
Election season is here. Ballot guides have been published, and early voting begins soon across Colorado. Now is the time to act: register to vote, confirm your registration is current, and plan to vote early. Whenever possible, skip the mail and deliver your ballot directly to an official drop box — it’s faster, and it removes any worry about postal delays. And don’t stop with your own vote: reach out to family and friends, in Colorado and across the country, and encourage them to register, verify their registration, find their polling place, and cast a ballot. Our faith calls us to participate in building a just and healthy society, and voting is one of the most direct ways we live that out together.
A record number of ballot measures. This year’s ballot includes 14 statewide measures matching 2024 as the largest slate in recent Colorado history. With so much to decide, it is more important than ever to read past the title of each initiative and understand what it would actually do. Titles are often written to sound appealing or neutral, but the real-world implications can be very different. Please take time to study the measures using trusted, nonpartisan and community-based guides before you vote. We’ve linked several below.
Why so many initiatives this year? Reporting from the Denver Post and Colorado Times Recorder helps explain the surge: much of it traces back to a single, well-funded political organization called Advance Colorado. Advance Colorado is a “dark money” group, meaning it is not required to disclose most of its donors. Its known backers include an invite-only circle of roughly four to five dozen donors who meet twice a year, along with disclosed contributions from figures such as former Governor Bill Owens, businessman Ralph Nagel, former CU President Bruce Benson, and megadonor Phil Anschutz’s broader network. The group’s annual revenue nearly tripled between 2021 and 2024, growing from about $1 million to $5.7 million. As the Colorado Republican Party has struggled — it currently carries significant debt and little cash on hand — Advance Colorado has effectively become the state’s most successful vehicle for conservative policy, pursuing through the ballot box what the party could no longer win through elections.
Advance Colorado is directly backing six statewide measures this year: Amendments 81, 82, 85, and 86, and Propositions 132 and 136. Notably, four of those six are proposed constitutional amendments, not ordinary statutes. This distinction matters. A constitutional amendment requires a higher bar to pass, 55% voter approval, but once it’s added to the constitution, it can only be changed or repealed by another statewide vote. The legislature has no power to fix or adjust it later, even if problems emerge. A statute, by contrast, can be revised by lawmakers as circumstances change. Amendment 85 deserves a closer look in particular. On its surface, requiring ballot questions to be written at an eighth-grade reading level sounds like a reasonable, voter-friendly reform. But its actual text goes further: it would also bar any state statute from requiring additional language before, after, or within a ballot question which could preempt existing legal requirements, like TABOR-mandated fiscal disclosures, that help voters understand a measure’s financial impact but might not meet the amendment’s plain-language standard. Critics also note the irony: Advance Colorado’s own ballot campaigns have been criticized for distilling complex, consequential policy into simple, appealing yes-or-no questions that obscure real tradeoffs. A stricter “plain language” mandate could make this tactic even easier to use, while stripping away the very disclosures voters rely on to see past it. Taken as a whole, the measures backed by Advance Colorado and the allied dark-money networks around it this election cycle would increase mandatory criminal sentencing (Proposition 132), expand the power of ICE to enforce immigration law in Colorado communities (Amendment 81), block clean energy policies (Amendment 82), cut taxes for the wealthiest residents (Proposition 136), limit the rights of transgender people (Propositions 134 and 135), suppress voting access (Amendment 84), and limit Colorado’s ability to counter the gerrymandering tactics being used by other states (Amendment 86).
The initiatives that fall outside Advance’s own six measures also deserve a closer look. Amendment 84 would eliminate Colorado’s current signature-based verification for mail ballots and instead require voters to provide the last four digits of a Social Security number or driver’s license number. Voting-rights advocates warn this change could disenfranchise eligible voters who don’t have a current ID number on file, including elderly voters and people who’ve recently moved or changed their name. It’s backed by a separate dark-money group, the Coalition for American Prosperity and Growth. Propositions 133, 134, and 135 come from another allied conservative group, Protect Kids Colorado. Proposition 133 would mandate life without parole for child sex trafficking convictions, removing judges’ ability to weigh the specifics of an individual case. Proposition 134 would bar transgender girls from girls’ school sports, and Proposition 135 would restrict gender-affirming medical care for minors. measures that Advocates for LGBTQ+ youth warn that these measures stigmatize an already vulnerable population, regardless of what a young person’s own family and doctors believe is best. And Amendment 83, while less overtly partisan, would write a right to hunt and fish directly into the Colorado Constitution. Eighteen other states have passed similar “right to hunt and fish” amendments. Several explicitly preserved local governments’ authority to regulate the discharge of firearms in populated areas. Not all have included that carve-out, though: Kentucky’s 2012 version applies “in both urban and rural areas” with no such exception, and it has since fueled a real dispute in a Louisville-area community over whether the city can still enforce its own ban on hunting within city limits. Similarly Colorado’s Amendment 83’s does not preserve a municipalities’ existing authority to restrict hunting in populated areas.
Advance Colorado and its allied groups are highly organized, well-resourced, and strategic, and in past ballot cycles have faced little coordinated pushback. This year is different: a coalition called Vote Common Sense, that includes the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, Conservation Colorado, Cobalt, and the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, has formed specifically to oppose these measures and has raised roughly $1 million so far, though that remains a fraction of the resources behind Advance Colorado and it allied groups’ donor network. That imbalance is exactly why it matters that we all take the time to understand every initiative on our ballot, and share what we learn with everyone we know. An informed electorate is one of the best safeguards we have against efforts to reshape state policy without public debate.
Ballot Guides Links
Links To Articles About Advance Colorado
The Machine Behind the Ballot: How Advance Colorado Shapes State Politics
Colorado Times Recorder Investigative Report
As Colorado Republicans Slip From Elected Power, A Dark-Money Conservative PAC Racked Up Ballot Wins
Denver Post, September 13, 2026
Advance Colorado Backs, Denver DA Rebukes, Admendment 81, A Mandate For Immigrant Reporting
Sentinel Colorado, September 14, 2026
Nicolais: 2026 Will Bring A Record Number Of Ballot Measures Thanks To Advance Colorado