Our mail-in ballots came in the mail at the end of last week, and I'm going to try and get mine posted in the next few days.
While I will likely end up voting a straight D ticket (either I have no basis for doing otherwise in any particular case, or else plenty of basis for not doing otherwise in a few case), the ballot propositions are, as always, a more interesting and thoughtful consideration. I had some serious pondering on a few of these, while others were pretty obvious decisions from my perspective.
Amendment 69 – State Health Care System – NO
While I believe that a single-payer system is ultimately the way to go, trying to manage it on the state level seems dubious to me, and it's not clear that state government is prepared to make the decisions necessary for this to be a good thing. I would rather see this tackled at the national level, given the stakes, if the Republicans can ever work toward something other than "repeal and replace."
[Obligatory Disclosure: I have family members in the health care / health insurance industry.]
Amendment 70 – Minimum Wage Increase – YES
If it's not a livable amount, then why bother having a Minimum Wage? Minimum Wage jobs are not just for high schoolers earning a few extra bucks any more; they are a first (or second) income for people who are scrambling to survive. The horror stories of economic desolation when the Minimum Wage goes up turn out to be just that, stories. Boosting the minimum wage not only demonstrably reduces public assistance spending, it boosts the economy through spending of that money (more than the incremental price increases of employers passing the costs on slows it down) It sounds like a win to me.
Amendment 71 – Initiated Constitutional Amendments – NO
Another one with very good intentions but dubious execution. While I think it should be more difficult to amend the state constitution than pass "normal" laws, 71 pushes this too far the other direction, pricing all but very deep pockets out of the business by requiring signatures from all over the state, as well as allowing ultra-liberal and ultra-conservative districts (of which we have both) or districts with a vested interest against particular proposals (there's a reason that 3/4 of the money going into the pro-71 camp has come from the oil and gas industries) to throw a monkey wrench into the works. Good goals, but this isn't the way to do it.
Amendment 72 – Cigarette and Tobacco Taxes – NO
I would gladly see tobacco usage vanish, but stacking up more taxes is a dubious way to do it — significant tax increases on cigarettes encourage bootlegging and related crime, and the proposal creates new funding streams to broad categories of services outside of anti-tobacco use funding that, if the goal of the measure is reached (curtailing smoking), will only dry up and need replacing. Not a bad idea, in principle, but poorly executed for a constitutional amendment.
Prop 106 – Medical Aid in Dying – YES
Lets a terminally-ill adult, with two physicians' approval, get a prescription for life-ending drugs. The likelihood of abuse seems passingly small, compared to the opportunity for people to die with dignity at a time of their choosing. Most of the opposition here is not over the implementation (which looks pretty solid to me in protecting against people being tricked / forced in to offing themselves) but over the principle. I can respect that, even if I disagree. Faced with that kind of decision, I would want to have that kind of option.
Prop 107 – Presidential Primary Elections – YES
Even if it costs several million dollars, it's worth it to increase overall participation in the selection of presidential candidates, over the quaint but obscure caucus system both parties have been sort of using since 2004.
This also mandates the primaries be open to unaffiliated voters. It is usually unfair to tell a private organization how to run its internal affairs, but the societal benefits of open primaries to encourage more moderate candidates is enough of a benefit that I'm willing to infringe in that fashion — especially since all taxpayer will be paying for the primaries, and the selections have a direct impact on everyone, not just the party.
Heck, given that the Founding Fathers were aghast at the idea of party politics (even as they very quickly created political parties), one could even argue that moderating the influence of parties is in keeping the original intent of our nation.
Prop 108 – Open Primary Elections – YES
This makes state primaries — from presidential to local — open to unaffiliated voters. I cover the arguments for this up under 107 (which only tackles presidential nominations, but also mandates a primary for them).
Amendment T – Slavery Language – NO
As far as I can tell, the whole purpose here is to scrub the word and concept of "slavery" from the state constitution, while potentially putting at risk various work programs related to prisons. I will confess to a certain amount of white privilege here, in not having (to my knowledge) any slave ancestors, but my objections here are for historic purposes: the language meant something at the time it was brought in, and should not be sanded away just because it's a word that now upsets people.
(I'm not 100% convinced, but I'm far from convinced this is needed.)
Amendment U – Property Taxes on Government Property Leases – NO
While it's framed as a means of efficiency (not collecting taxes that it costs more to collect than they bring in), it still smells of someone figuring out a scam via a property tax exemption — or, if nothing else, further complicating the tax law.
Ballot Issue 4B – Science and Cultural Facilities District – YES
This 0.1% regional sales tax has been a tremendous to science, cultural, and arts institutions in Denver Metro area, allowing a variety of groups, large and small — from the zoo to the ballet to local theaters to museums — to get funding that would otherwise be difficult and costly to gather. The SCFD is something that makes us special, and benefits everyone in the community because of it.
Amendment U looks to me to be yet another way to increase government's subsidizing of agriculture and mineral extraction. I think we should do the opposite and charge them fair market value for use of government land.
I voted, very reluctantly, for amendment T. I am strongly in favor of not having people assigned to for-profit prisons, where they are forced to work for someone else's profit. But I'm very nervous that this amendment will outlaw community service, with the unintended result that people who are currently sentenced to community service will instead be sentenced to prison time.
+John Bump Re Amendment U, that may well be the kind of scam I was thinking about. In theory, it's for very low cost property taxes, but that sort of camel nose under the tent flap usually ends up with outraged headlines a few years later.
Re Amendment T, I concur with forced prison labor (and am roundly against for-profit prisons for a wide array of reasons). The possibility that anything that smacks of "involuntary servitude" in prison might be challenged under this change is a serious problem, though. While proponents note that other states, without this language, have such programs, the fact that the language would be removed from the constitution here is the sort of thing that causes courts to consider what was really meant by the voters, and thus opening up more stuff to challenge.
I voted no on Amendment 72, not only because I agree with your sentiment, but also because the the state constitution is a bad spot to be implementing tax law. Amendments 70 and U are both in the same boat.
I haven't dug into it yet but I'll be interested to see what material differences there are in putting up a proposition vs ballot issue vs amendment.