2021 Election Results and 2022 Efforts to Overturn Election Results

Voters rejected all 3 of the 2021 revenue and spending state ballot measures.

All the referred city measures (2I through 2M) easily passed. The Fur-Free measure (Question 302) also passed, but with only 51% of the vote.

More people – 33,052 of us – voted on the Bedrooms measure (Question 301) than on any of the other city ballot measures; it failed to pass, garnering 47.7% of the vote. However, most of the new city council members are supporters of the Bedrooms measure and with the Marshall Fire putting more pressure on housing stock, the council got the city manager on record saying that the city is not enforcing its occupancy limits. Does this mean that local elections actually don’t have consequences?

Voter Approval of CU South Annexation Agreement (Question 303) also failed, getting 43.2% of the vote. As previously noted, opponents of the CU South annexation agreement want another go. They have collected enough signatures for a referendum vote on the annexation agreement. It should be on the ballot this fall.

In other news, a US District Court judge dismissed a request to prevent unaffiliated voters from voting in this year’s state primary. Five Republicans represented by John Eastman brought the legal action. This year the Republican statewide ballot has several competitive races, in contrast to the Democratic ballot. In 2016 Colorado voters passed Prop 108 to allow unaffiliated voters to vote in a major party’s primary – unless three-fourths of the party’s State Central Committee voted by October 1 of the previous year to choose nominees solely via the assembly process. No major party has yet chosen the assembly-only route, but a party concerned about unaffiliated voters tipping the scales might consider the option more seriously in 2023.