What’s on your 2026 Colorado ballot: All 14 statewide measures

By RMV Editorial Board

Colorado voters open their mail ballots this October to more citizen-written questions than any election in half a century.

Fourteen measures. Thirteen put there by citizens gathering signatures, one sent over by the Legislature. The total ties the record set in 2024, 2008, and 2006, but the share driven by petition rather than lawmakers sets this year apart.

Clerks began mailing ballots Oct. 2 and must have them out to every active voter by Oct. 9. Election Day is Nov. 3.

Here is what each question does, who is behind it, and where the money is. Committee registrations described below are those on file as of Oct. 5. Campaign-finance figures reflect filings posted through Oct. 4. More committees can register before Election Day.

Most constitutional amendments, the ones numbered as “Amendments,” need 55 percent to pass. Amendment 87 is the exception. Because its constitutional change is limited to a repeal, it passes with a simple majority. Propositions also need a simple majority.

One fight is worth watching before the rundown. Amendment 87 and Proposition 136 pull in opposite directions on the income tax, one setting graduated rates, the other capping the rate at 4.4 percent. RMV compared the two underneath.

If both pass, state law says the measure with more yes votes prevails on the provisions that irreconcilably conflict. The Blue Book notes that if both are approved the exact outcome is unclear, and that the Legislature or a court would have to sort out how to resolve the conflict.

What that means in practice is disputed.

The Bell Policy Center, which backs 87, says the measure has no effect on refunds under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), and that if 87 draws more votes, all of it takes effect and 136 becomes irrelevant.

Advance Colorado’s Michael Fields wrote in August that he agrees the higher-vote measure controls the conflict, but that 87’s constitutional change could carry effects beyond the rates, including on state tax breaks for Social Security, pension, and military retirement income. Backers of 87 dispute that reading.

Those competing readings are the sides’ own. The courts have not settled them.

Three committees that span the ballot

Three committees turn up again and again in the rundown that follows, so their totals are given here once rather than repeated under every measure they have taken a side on.

Vote Common Sense has raised $495,000 and is registered against nine of the 14 measures. Its largest donors are the Green Advocacy Project ($200,000), Denver philanthropist Merle Chambers ($100,000), and the Colorado Immigration Rights Coalition Action Fund ($50,000).

A Brighter Colorado has raised $306,625. It supports six of the Advance Colorado measures and opposes Amendment 87 and Proposition NN. Common Sense America gave $250,000 and Advance Colorado itself gave $20,000.

The People’s No has raised $100,000, all of it from the Color Action Fund, and is registered against four measures.

The Advance Colorado measures

A cluster of measures on this ballot traces to the same small group of people. Republican lawyer Suzanne Taheri, Advance Colorado president Michael Fields, and Steven Ward file out of the same Denver office.

On the Secretary of State’s certified list, four measures name Advance Colorado outright as the proponents’ affiliation, Amendments 82, 85, 86, and Proposition 136. Four more are filed through West Group, Taheri’s firm, by overlapping filers, Amendments 81, 83, 84, and Proposition 132.

Public reporting and the group’s own conduct directly tie six of the eight to Advance Colorado. Fields has announced signature drives as the group’s president, and it has run ad campaigns for its measures.

Amendments 83 and 84 share the same West Group filers but have their own separately identified campaigns and backers.

Complete Colorado reported in June, in a piece RMV carried, that Advance Colorado had two measures already on the ballot and at least three more gathering signatures.

This guide details six of them here, the four filed as Advance Colorado plus Amendment 81 and Proposition 132, which the group has publicly claimed through its own press events and advertising.

Amendments 83 and 84 are covered in the next section. They share the same West Group filers but the group has not put its name to them the same way.

Amendment 81, law enforcement reporting to federal authorities, would require law enforcement to notify the federal Department of Homeland Security within 72 hours after charging a person with a crime if the person is not lawfully present in the United States, or their status is unknown after a reasonable attempt to determine it, and either the charge is a crime of violence or the person has a prior felony conviction. The prior-felony condition can trigger the requirement regardless of what the new charge is.

Advance Colorado is behind the measure. The registered supporting committees are A Brighter Colorado and the Eagle County Republican Women Club.

Registered opposition committees are Colorado Communities First, The People’s No, and Vote Common Sense.

Colorado Communities First has raised $239,644, nearly all of it from two groups. The Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition gave $158,954 and the ACLU of Colorado gave $58,597.

Amendment 82, right to natural gas, would create a constitutional right for consumers to buy natural gas for cooking or heating in homes or businesses, and for distributors and utilities to sell it.

Advance Colorado’s Steven Ward and Michael Fields are the designated representatives. The supporting committees are A Brighter Colorado and the Energy Freedom Alliance of the Rockies, which has reported no contributions.

Registered opposition committees are No Pollution in the Constitution and Vote Common Sense.

No Pollution in the Constitution has raised $355,210. Conservation Colorado and its education fund supplied $333,090 of that, and Western Resource Advocates gave the remaining $22,120.

Amendment 85, plain-language ballot questions, would require ballot questions to be written in plain language at no higher than an eighth-grade reading level, and would bar a statute from requiring conflicting language in citizen-initiated measures.

Advance Colorado’s Suzanne Taheri and Michael Fields are the designated representatives.

A Brighter Colorado is the only registered supporter and Vote Common Sense the only registered opponent. Neither has raised money specific to this measure.

Amendment 86, congressional redistricting, is the one closest to the redistricting initiatives the Colorado Supreme Court struck last cycle on single-subject grounds. The full text runs 14 pages and does more than the short summaries suggest.

It re-enacts Colorado’s existing independent congressional redistricting commission, the one voters created in the constitution in 2018.

That means the 12-member commission, the retired-justice selection panel, nonpartisan staff drawing the maps, the community-of-interest and anti-gerrymandering rules, the public-hearing requirements, and Supreme Court review of the final plan.

The commission is already constitutional, so the measure restates that structure rather than moving it into the constitution for the first time.

What it adds is a process for off-cycle redistricting, changing maps between the once-a-decade redraws.

It bars changes to a final map unless at least three public meetings are held, the changes do not divide communities of interest or purposefully favor one party, and both the commission and the Colorado Supreme Court approve.

At least ten states have redrawn congressional maps off-cycle since 2025.

Advance Colorado’s Suzanne Taheri and Elizabeth Caven are the designated representatives.

Two committees back the measure, Fair Redistricting Colorado and A Brighter Colorado. No opposition committee is registered.

Fair Redistricting Colorado, the committee specific to this measure, has reported $252,500. Of that, $250,000 came from the national American Revival PAC and $2,500 directly from Advance Colorado.

The measure lands in the middle of a national fight. The Colorado Sun reported, in a piece RMV carried, that a group tied to Democrat leadership in the U.S. House was funding the competing attempt to redraw Colorado’s congressional map.

Proposition 132, penalties for fentanyl crimes, sets penalties on a sliding scale rather than one flat rule.

Under the text, distributing, selling or manufacturing any amount of a substance containing fentanyl becomes a Level 1 drug felony, the state’s highest, which the Blue Book puts at eight to 32 years. Distribution that is the proximate cause of a user’s death is also a Level 1 felony.

Possession is tiered by weight.

More than one gram up to four grams is a Level 3 felony. One gram or less is a new “treatment-mandated” Level 4 felony that a defendant can have vacated and replaced with a misdemeanor conviction after completing court-ordered drug treatment. So the mandatory-treatment path applies to the smallest possession cases, not to distribution.

Weight is not the only trigger. A separate subsection makes possession a Level 2 felony, above both weight tiers, whenever the fentanyl or related opiate makes up more than 60 percent of the mixture, however little it weighs.

That part does not start with the rest of the measure. Its start date depends on a notice from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation that it has the resources to test for concentration.

Advance Colorado is behind the measure. A Brighter Colorado and the Eagle County Republican Women Club are the registered supporters.

Registered opposition committees are The People’s No, Coloradans for Real Safety Solutions, and Vote Common Sense.

Coloradans for Real Safety Solutions is the best-funded opponent of any single Advance Colorado measure, at about $1.1 million. Philanthropist Lynn Schusterman gave $500,000, the ACLU of Colorado $200,540, Signal Behavioral Health Network $134,500, and the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition $132,983.

The measure takes effect Jan. 1, 2027, if approved.

Proposition 136, income tax rate cap, would cap Colorado’s income tax rate at 4.4 percent of federal taxable income for both individuals and corporations, starting with the 2027 tax year. This is the measure that collides with Amendment 87’s graduated tax.

Advance Colorado’s Taheri and Fields are the designated representatives.

A Brighter Colorado and Keep Colorado Affordable are the registered supporters, and Vote Common Sense the registered opponent. Keep Colorado Affordable has reported no contributions.

A 2025 Magellan Strategies survey of 1,136 registered voters, taken July 30 to Aug. 12, 2025, found TABOR itself at 45 percent favorable, 22 percent unfavorable, and 33 percent with no opinion.

The other citizen initiatives

Amendment 83, constitutional right to hunt and fish, would create a constitutional right to hunt, fish, and harvest wildlife by traditional methods, establish hunting and fishing as the preferred means of managing wildlife populations, and preserve the state’s power to regulate for conservation, public safety, or the future of hunting and fishing.

The right does not cover nongame species, endangered species, or species illegal to hunt under federal law. The text also says it does not authorize trespass on private property or change trespass and property-rights law.

The measure is filed by Steven Ward and Suzanne Taheri through West Group, the same office behind the Advance Colorado measures.

The Secretary of State’s ballot page lists Let’s Go Colorado, T. Roosevelt Conservation Alliance, and Colorado’s Wildlife Deserve Better as registered supporting committees.

Registered opposition committees are Protect Colorado’s Constitution, Stop the Constitutional Power Grab, and Colorado Hunters and Anglers for Sensible Wildlife Conservation.

On the money, two committees have reported contributions on the yes side, together about $1.99 million. Let’s Go Colorado has reported none.

The main one, which reported early under the name T. Roosevelt Conservation Alliance and now files as Vote Yes on 83, has raised $1,885,820. Its largest gifts are $1.56 million from the national T. Roosevelt Conservation Alliance, $150,000 from Farrell-Roeh Capital, and $100,000 from donor Jeff DeMaske.

A second committee, Colorado’s Wildlife Deserve Better, reported $100,105, almost all of it in two gifts of $50,000, one from T. Roosevelt Action and one from the Colorado chapter of Safari Club International. Counting the national group’s $30,000 to the first committee, Safari Club money totals $80,000 across the two.

The opposition has raised far less, about $169,000 across the three committees.

Colorado Hunters and Anglers for Sensible Wildlife Conservation reported $161,905, most of it a $100,000 gift from the Center for a Humane Economy, plus $30,000 from the Sierra Club. Protect Colorado’s Constitution reported $6,825 in small gifts of $1,000 and under. Stop the Constitutional Power Grab has reported nothing.

Amendment 84, mail ballot voter identification, would require a voter to sign and include the last four digits of their Social Security number, or their Colorado REAL ID driver’s license or identification number, on the outside of their mail ballot. A voter could cure missing or incorrect information with alternative ID, and clerks could not count a ballot until the problem is fixed.

The Colorado Sun names the proponents as Chuck Broerman, the former El Paso County clerk, and Suzanne Taheri of West Group, the same firm behind the Advance Colorado measures.

The yes committee on file is Colorado Voter Trust Initiative. Two opposition committees are registered, Defend our Ballots and Vote Common Sense. Defend our Ballots has reported no contributions.

The Sun reports the committee paid signature gatherers, and TRACER shows the Colorado Voter Trust Initiative has raised $4.2 million from three sources. The Coalition for American Prosperity and Growth gave $2.2 million, and A Public Voice and the American Jobs and Growth Fund gave $1 million each.

The Sun describes the Coalition as registered to a Colorado Springs shipping store that rents mailboxes, with the source of its money unclear.

Amendment 87, graduated income tax, would end Colorado’s flat 4.4 percent income tax and set graduated rates starting with the 2027 tax year. The rates are marginal, meaning each applies only to the income that falls within its band, the way federal brackets work.

Under the text, income under $100,000 is taxed below today’s rate, at 3.71 percent up to $25,000 and 4.21 percent from there to $100,000. Income from $100,000 to $500,000 stays at 4.4 percent.

Higher rates begin above $500,000. Income from $500,000 to $750,000 is taxed at 7.41 percent, income from $750,000 to $1 million at 7.9 percent, and income over $1 million at 8.41 percent. Corporations follow the same schedule.

Because the higher rates apply only to the portion of taxable income above each threshold, a filer just over the $500,000 line pays the higher rate only on the amount above it.

The certified ballot title leads with the figure voters will see first, a state tax increase of up to $2.7 billion a year, though that is the maximum-dollar estimate required on the title. The state’s central forecast for the first full year is closer to $2 billion.

New revenue goes into a Colorado Future’s Account for K-12 education, health care, and child care. The measure keeps the 4.4 percent rate on gains from selling a principal residence.

Proponents state in the measure’s findings that 97 percent of taxpayers, those making under $500,000, would get a tax cut.

The state’s own figures bear out a cut for that group. The marginal rate on income from $100,000 to $500,000 stays at 4.4 percent, but those taxpayers still pay the lower rates on their first $100,000, so their total bill drops.

A table in the certified ballot title puts numbers on it, as a change in average tax owed by income category. Filers reporting $100,001 to $200,000 would owe $298 less. Those reporting $200,001 to $500,000 would owe $325 less, as would those reporting $500,001 to $1 million.

The first increase in the table appears above $1 million. Filers reporting $1 million to $2 million would owe $4,764 more.

One caveat on reading those figures. The categories use adjusted gross income, while the rates apply to federal taxable income, so the categories do not line up directly with the brackets.

The only registered yes committee is Protect Colorado’s Future Coalition.

It has raised about $1 million, its largest gifts from the Bell Policy Center ($138,000), New Era Colorado Action Fund ($131,000), the Colorado Statewide Parent Coalition ($128,000), and Great Education Colorado Action ($111,000).

Seven committees are registered against it, and only four have reported money.

A Brighter Colorado is the largest, though its total is spread across the eight measures it has taken a side on. Americans for Prosperity Colorado has reported $49,630, all of it from the national Americans for Prosperity. Your Family’s Future Alliance reported $15,787 and Affordable Colorado reported $3,426, the latter entirely from the Independence Institute.

Keep Colorado Affordable, Let’s Go Colorado, and Don’t Price Us Out are also registered against 87 but have reported no contributions.

The Protect Kids Colorado measures

Three propositions share the same designated representatives, Erin Lee and Michelle Austin.

Their supporting committee, Protect Kids Colorado, has raised about $135,000 across the three measures. The money came in small. The median contribution is $100, only three donors gave more than $5,000, and the largest single backer is Pikes Peak Citizens for Life at $19,000.

A second registered committee, Protect Our Children, reported no contributions.

The opposition money, concentrated on 134 and 135, dwarfs that total.

Proposition 133, penalties for human trafficking of a minor, would expand the crime of trafficking a minor for sexual servitude to include knowingly trading anything of monetary value to buy or sell sexual activity with a minor, and raise the penalty to life in prison without parole.

The text carves out a governor’s standing power of pardon, commutation, or clemency, so the sentence is not absolute under the measure’s own terms.

Its short title is the “Children Are Not For Sale Act,” and it takes effect Jan. 1, 2027, if approved.

The only opposition committee on file for 133 is Vote Common Sense.

Proposition 134, male and female participation in school sports, would require K-12 and collegiate sports teams to be designated male, female, or coeducational based on biological sex, generally limit athletes to the team of their designated sex or a coeducational team, let a female play on a male team where no female team exists, and bar adverse action against schools that keep separate teams.

Registered opposition committees are Families Not Politics, No on 109 and 110, Protect Trans Kids, The People’s No, and Vote Common Sense, the same five registered against Proposition 135.

Families Not Politics, the main opponent, has raised about $1.39 million, TRACER shows, most of it from advocacy organizations. Six donors account for roughly 70 percent of the total.

Its largest gifts are the One Colorado Education Fund ($327,000), Cobalt Advocates ($254,000), the ACLU ($140,000 across two entities), and $100,000 each from the Rose Community Foundation, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and Denver philanthropist Merle Chambers.

RMV has examined its funding in more detail.

The other opponents are far smaller. No on 109 and 110, which now files under the name No on 134 and 135, has raised $10,529, its largest gift $5,000 from the Denver Democratic Socialists of America. Protect Trans Kids has reported nothing.

Proposition 135, prohibit certain surgeries on minors, would bar a health-care professional or other person from performing, prescribing, administering, or providing surgery on a minor to alter the minor’s biological sex characteristics, and bar state or federal funds, Medicaid, or insurance from paying for it.

The text is limited to surgery responding to a minor’s perception of sex or gender.

It does not cover treatment for people born with a medically verifiable disorder of sex development, treatment for acquired physical or chemical abnormalities, or male circumcision.

Its short title is the “Protect Children From Irreversible Sex Change Surgery Act,” and it takes effect Jan. 1, 2027, if approved.

The same five committees registered against Proposition 134 are registered against 135.

The conservation and education measures

Proposition 137, designate sporting goods sales tax revenue for conservation, would let the state keep and spend the revenue from the existing state sales tax on sporting goods and equipment to conserve water, land, and forests, prevent wildfires, and support outdoor recreation, rather than returning it as a refund.

The yes committee, Protect Colorado’s Land and Water, Prevent Wildfires, has raised about $3.55 million, TRACER shows. Its largest donors are the Nature Conservancy ($1.58 million), the WRA Action Fund ($524,000), the Fund for a Better Future ($350,000), Trust for Public Land ($213,000), the Holdfast Trust ($200,000), and $125,000 each from Thomas and Olivia Walton.

A registered opposition committee, Protect Colorado’s Land, Communities, and Tax Dollars, is on file but has raised only about $4,700, most of it from a single $3,462 donor.

Proposition NN, state public K-12 education funding, is the only measure the Legislature referred. It comes from SB26-135, and it would raise the cap on revenue the state can keep under TABOR, letting the state hold onto surplus that would otherwise be refunded to taxpayers, and spend it on schools and children’s programs.

The new cap is set by what the state spends on K-12, which lifts the ceiling by about $4.6 billion in the first year.

That is the ceiling, not the take. The state expects to actually keep around $500 million the first year, the amount it is forecast to collect above the current TABOR limit.

Retained revenue does not go straight to schools. It goes first to reimburse local governments for homestead property tax exemptions for seniors, disabled veterans, and Gold Star spouses. What is left flows into a new Children’s Account.

That order starts in 2027-28. In the first year, everything retained goes into the account.

For the first 10 years, at least half of the account goes to K-12, with the required amount growing each year, directed to teacher pay, retention, smaller class sizes, and career and technical courses.

The rest goes to programs for children, prioritizing full-day preschool and child care. After 10 years, a set amount stays dedicated to K-12 and the Legislature decides how to spend what remains.

The advertised “2 percent a year” increase for schools is a ceiling, not a floor.

As RMV reported, the bill sets the annual increase as the lesser of the formula amount or whatever the state actually keeps above the TABOR cap. If the surplus is smaller, schools get less, and if there is no surplus, nothing. Only the portion tied to teacher pay and the other three named uses, roughly a third of the money in the first two years, reaches districts by formula.

The measure’s fiscal note projects lower TABOR refunds, with the estimated reduction rising from the first year to the second. Later years depend on how much revenue the state collects above the TABOR limit.

The Blue Book analysis says the effect in those years could range from no lost refund to more than $1,000 per taxpayer.

There is no tax-rate increase. The money comes from surplus the state would otherwise return.

The yes committee, Yes for Colorado Kids, has raised about $2.06 million, TRACER shows, led by $1 million from Gary Advocacy LLC and $950,000 from the Colorado Fund for Children and Public Education, with the rest from the state teachers union and local education associations.

Five committees are registered against NN, all five of them also registered against Amendment 87. Only two have reported money, A Brighter Colorado and Affordable Colorado, both counted against Amendment 87 above.

One more on your ballot, if you live along the Front Range

Ballot Issue 7A is not one of the 14 statewide questions, but it appears on the same ballot for voters inside the Front Range Passenger Rail District. It is the district’s tax measure for the Colorado Connector, referred by the district board Aug. 28 on a 14-1 vote.

It would raise district taxes by an estimated $295 million a year and authorize $580 million in debt at a repayment cost of $785 million, through a 0.333 percent sales and use tax, about 33 cents on a $100 purchase, with no sunset and exempt from TABOR limits.

Lawmakers redrew the district this year to a smaller footprint centered on communities along the planned route.

Only eligible voters who live inside the district decide 7A, while the sales and use tax applies to taxable purchases made anywhere within it.

The route runs from Fort Collins to Pueblo.

A shorter Denver-to-Fort Collins service is planned separately and does not depend on this tax. Colorado Newsline reported in May 2025 that officials expected it to run three times a day starting in 2029, paid for with state transportation fees and RTD sales tax revenue rather than by the district.

The yes committee, Coloradans for CoCo, has raised $340,972. Its largest donors are Sterling Ranch LLC ($125,000), Eric Laufer ($100,000), the Colorado Rockies Baseball Club ($50,000), and Daniel Caruso ($25,000).

No opposition committee is on file.

Before you vote

The campaign-finance figures above are drawn from the Secretary of State’s TRACER bulk data, accessed Oct. 5 and covering filings posted through Oct. 4.

Committees whose measures are on the ballot file on a frequent schedule this year, so the totals will keep climbing through Election Day.

The state’s Blue Book, written by nonpartisan legislative staff, goes out with ballots and lays out each measure in full.