EDIT: Tuesday, November 3rd
Practical post, no lecture. Denver, your ballot is on your counter right now, and every odd-year election the same thing happens: the people who agree hardest vote least, and margins get decided by whoever actually walked to a drop box. This is the ten minutes you need to finish yours.
The two measures eating this city's group chats:
Prop 134 requires every team in Colorado to be labeled male, female, or co-ed, K-12 through college so that's every DPS team AND every college team in Denver, from rec leagues up through Metro and CU Denver. Enforcement means sex verification of student athletes: the reporting that's come out describes doctor's notes and DNA swabs costing families hundreds of dollars, and any girl can be challenged by anyone with a grudge too tall, too strong, short hair. Denver schools have handled these situations case by case for decades, and nobody in the state even tracks how many trans kids play school sports because the number is tiny. We'd be building a statewide verification bureaucracy for a problem nobody can count.
Prop 135 bans gender-affirming surgery for minors. Colorado's own nonpartisan Blue Book flags the language as vague enough to sweep in surgeries for kids who aren't even transgender intersex kids included. Harvard research puts actual trans surgeries for teens 15–17 at roughly 2 per 100,000. And Colorado law already requires parental consent for any surgery on a minor. A near-empty ban with real collateral damage and an insurance knock-on for families.
Context both measures share: they bypassed Colorado's legislature on purpose lawmakers refused to pass this stuff because national organizers picked our state as a blue-state "testing ground." Denver knows this playbook: Amendment 2 in 1992 made us the Hate State, cost this city real boycotts and convention business, and took decades to live down. We've run this experiment before. We know the bill that comes with it.
The logistics the actual point of this post:
Your ballot is at your house (or your old address update at GoVoteColorado.com or vote in person)
NO on 134. NO on 135. Vote the whole sheet while you're at it Prop NN (school funding, Denver benefits directly) and Prop 137 (conservation) matter too
SIGN YOUR ENVELOPE. Missing or mismatched signatures are the #1 reason Colorado ballots get tossed and they're fixable through ballot cure if you catch it quickly
Denver drop boxes are everywhere and open 24/7 until 7pm Tuesday rec centers, libraries, the clerk's office downtown, all over the neighborhoods. No stamp, no line
Lost, damaged, or botched it? Any Denver vote center prints you a replacement through Election Day
Already voted? You're the backbone. Now text three Denver friends and ask if theirs is in. That's the whole margin in an election like this.
There will be a 400-comment war in this thread by tonight. Fine. But the actual decision doesn't happen in the comments it happens at drop boxes by 7pm Tuesday, November 3. Denver turned this state around once before, back when it counted. Let's do the ten-minute version this week.
NO on 134. NO on 135. Get it in the box.
