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Author: Jen Schumann

Colorado became a national model for mail voting. Election Integrity Network says it should go back.
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Colorado became a national model for mail voting. Election Integrity Network says it should go back.

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice The ballot simply shows up weeks before Election Day. Some ballots are filled out the day they arrive. Others sit untouched until the weekend. Too many, most will argue, end up ignored. Eventually, a lot are mailed, taken to a drop box or walked into a polling center.  It’s the only system younger voters have ever known. The Election Integrity Network would prefer something closer to the system Colorado left behind. In May, they released a 116-page handbook outlining what it believes election laws should look like across the country. Before ballots filled the mailbox EIN founder Cleta Mitchell sees Colorado's pre-2013 election system as a blueprint rather than a relic. "Before 2013–14, Colorado used a precinct-based, i...
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Prose that just happens to rhyme: Larry Gatlin on books, faith and the America worth passing on
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Prose that just happens to rhyme: Larry Gatlin on books, faith and the America worth passing on

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Soccer wasn't really happening for Royal Gatlin. The three-year-old was on the field as a player, technically. But he was picking little purple clovers for his mother and bringing them to her. When the game break came, Royal found a package of Goldfish crackers in his baby brother Walker’s stroller and grabbed it. "Papa, I can't open it." Larry Gatlin did. After eating a few, Royal got a question from his grandfather. Could Papa have one? "No." What followed wasn't a lecture. It was a lesson. "What would the world look like if everybody acted and thought like you did? What if nobody would share stuff?" Gatlin recalled asking. "It's called the categorical imperative." Papa was teaching German philosophy written in 1785...
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Drake Middle School removed “America, Reloading.” Then another poem fight started.
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Local, Top Stories

Drake Middle School removed “America, Reloading.” Then another poem fight started.

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Drake Middle School parents were told last year that students could write spoken-word poems about politics or divisive issues if they personally chose those topics. This spring, one DMS student wrote a pro-life poem about abortion. School officials told the student she could turn the poem in for credit, but could not read it aloud in class. Parents had already spent more than a year warning DMS and Jeffco leaders about the school’s SLAM poetry unit before the story spread nationally. Parents objected to SLAM poetry unit in 2025 Parents began emailing DMS leadership in 2025 after students watched “America, Reloading” and “The Star Spanglish Banner” in class. One email sent to teacher Tanisha Lee and DMS principal Jill Kline des...
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Tina Peters asks Colorado Supreme Court to overturn convictions after juror wondered if she was “targeted”
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Tina Peters asks Colorado Supreme Court to overturn convictions after juror wondered if she was “targeted”

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Business phone lines belonging to a juror were cut on the first Friday of Tina Peters’ trial. For the next 10 days, the juror wondered if she was being “targeted.”  The Colorado Court of Appeals said in April that none of that required a hearing.  Peters is now asking the Colorado Supreme Court to rule otherwise. Peters’ lawyers say what happened with the juror had a solution that was set by precedent, a 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. And they asked for it—a hearing to investigate whether outside influence may have affected the juror.  Peters’ attorneys filed the motion for the hearing on September 20, 2024. Barrett turned it down later that afternoon. This spring, the Court of Appeals agreed with him. What the ju...
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Beyond the military record: What war left behind for one family
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Beyond the military record: What war left behind for one family

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice A faded military form cannot explain what war does to a family. The DD214 for Willie Jerome Evans Sr. records medals, overseas assignments and an honorable discharge from the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. It does not record the anger that settled over his family, the silence between father and son or the moment decades later when that same son held his father’s hand in a Colorado hospital room and whispered forgiveness. Willie Jerome Evans Sr. at his 1962 high school graduation in North Carolina. Family photos and documents courtesy of Kalvin Evans For years, Kalvin Evans knew only fragments of his father’s military story. The hardest parts of Willie’s military experience did not come directly from him. In an interview with RM...
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Colorado debated abortion oversight while Lexi’s autopsy stayed redacted
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Colorado debated abortion oversight while Lexi’s autopsy stayed redacted

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Taco Tuesdays with her mother. Motorcycle rides with her stepdad. Choir, books and afternoons at the Denver Aquarium. That was the teenager her family remembered. Alexis Arguello was 18 when she died in Fort Collins on Feb. 6, 2025 after a second-trimester abortion. Coincidentally, it was less than a week after her death that Rep. Scott Bottoms introduced a bill for abortion-clinic oversight. A relative of Arguello testified for the bill a month later, even while the portions describing the abortion and related medical complications remained hidden from view. It took an order from a district court judge for the records to be released unredacted.  In the order, St. John emphasized that autopsy reports are public records subject to dis...
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Polis explained both commutations in writing. One drew a party revolt.
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Polis explained both commutations in writing. One drew a party revolt.

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Democrats organized a censure push over Tina Peters. No comparable campaign emerged over the commutation of Brandin Kreuzer. On the same day Gov. Jared Polis commuted Tina Peters' sentence, he granted clemency to a man convicted of shooting a Douglas County sheriff's deputy during a 2008 crime spree. Peters drew a formal complaint signed by hundreds of Democrats, an impeachment call and a sitting U.S. senator's rebuke. The other commutation drew none of that. No party complaint. No impeachment call. No signature drive. Polis put both of his reasons in writing. Two letters, one day Brandin Kreuzer was charged with attempted first-degree murder of a peace officer and convicted of first-degree assault, along with second-degree kidnappi...
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Nearly 500 Democrats move to censure Polis. His own party meets Wednesday to decide what to do.
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State, Rocky Mountain Voice, Top Stories

Nearly 500 Democrats move to censure Polis. His own party meets Wednesday to decide what to do.

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice The Colorado Democratic Party's central committee meets Wednesday to decide what to do about its own governor. In front of it is a formal complaint, signed by hundreds of Democrats and growing by the hour, asking the party to censure Gov. Jared Polis for commuting Tina Peters' sentence. The signers are not asking a court to undo the commutation. They are not asking the legislature to reverse it. They cannot.  Colorado's constitution gives the governor sole clemency authority, and neither the courts nor the legislature nor the party can take back what Polis already signed. What the signers want is for the party to declare that one of its own governors acted against its interests, to bar him from its marquee events and to say publicly ...
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From a Detroit crack house to the National Mall: The pastor Colorado sees in June
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Rocky Mountain Voice, National, Top Stories

From a Detroit crack house to the National Mall: The pastor Colorado sees in June

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Lorenzo Sewell sold drugs on Detroit's east side as a kid. His father went to prison for murder. His younger brother was killed by a car. Today he stands on the National Mall with House Speaker Mike Johnson and War Secretary Pete Hegseth, part of a national moment of rededication that organizers expect to draw 15,000 people. "We can be in a crack house or we can be in the White House," Sewell said on Fox & Friends Weekend Sunday morning. He says faith took him from the one toward the other. "God loves us and willing to reach out to us regardless." Next month, Colorado will meet him in person. Sewell now leads Detroit's 180 Church and is one of the faith leaders at Rededicate 250, the National Mall gathering marking the country's ap...
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Colorado’s $500,000 Medicaid commission has no mandate to investigate fraud
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Colorado’s $500,000 Medicaid commission has no mandate to investigate fraud

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Colorado lawmakers spent weeks debating a new commission to study Medicaid sustainability. The bill they sent to Gov. Jared Polis on May 9 names three major failures inside the state’s Medicaid system in its legislative declaration—the post-COVID eligibility purge, the rideshare scandal and the autism therapy audit. But the bill never directs the commission to investigate fraud, waste or abuse. Instead, SB26-187 creates a 10-member Medicaid Cost Containment and Sustainability Commission tasked with “establishing shared understanding,” exploring policy options and producing recommendations. The bill includes a $500,000 appropriation, including $415,000 for a contractor to facilitate meetings and roughly seven months to produce a report—due...
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