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Case: Why Colorado’s Next Attorney General Must Investigate the Flawed Voting System
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

Case: Why Colorado’s Next Attorney General Must Investigate the Flawed Voting System

By John Case | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Colorado voters deserve to know the truth about our voting system. Based on the evidence cited below, this letter calls for our next Attorney General to conduct an independent investigation of the voting system and publish the results to the people. The evidence: Please watch the 21 minute video at https://vimeo.com/1220653027 in which computer expert Mark Cook demonstrates how bad actors can control Colorado election outcomes without being detected. Votes in 62 counties are counted on computers leased from Liberty Vote, Inc., formerly known as Dominion. Federal standards prohibit use of components in critical infrastructure that are supplied by America's enemies or are subject to foreign control. Supply chain expert Co...
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Colorado Medicaid rolls fell 30 percent as spending climbed by $2 billion
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Colorado Medicaid rolls fell 30 percent as spending climbed by $2 billion

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Colorado Medicaid covered about 510,000 fewer people in an average month in fiscal 2025 than it did two years earlier. Estimated spending still climbed. That is part of the puzzle a new legislative commission has been handed.  When the state unwound the pandemic-era rule that kept people continuously enrolled, average monthly enrollment fell roughly 30 percent between fiscal 2023 and fiscal 2025. Common sense says a program covering far fewer people should cost less. Colorado's cost more.  A September brief from the Common Sense Institute puts the increase at an estimated $2.09 billion, a 15 percent jump. Fewer members. Higher costs. Less room to move. What the state pays per person The clearest w...
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From no-fault divorce to VAWA, the case that fatherlessness was by design
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From no-fault divorce to VAWA, the case that fatherlessness was by design

By Carl Roberts | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice My guess is that most people, most parents, rarely think about parental rights. Why? Most likely because their parental rights have never been threatened. Their role in their child's life never questioned or judged. They haven't been through the drill of a custody battle or had CPS show up at their door. Nor have they had someone at their child's school secretly try to transition their son into a girl or daughter into a boy. Most parents are simply unaware that this is happening all around them, every day, until it hits them square between the eyes. Another layer to it is, not only do they not have the lived experience, but they can't imagine how the systems that were built to protect children often cause far more harm than...
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The Decisiveness Weapon: Charlie and the Truth Factory 
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The Decisiveness Weapon: Charlie and the Truth Factory 

By Drake Hunter | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice As I sit quietly this morning, rather than a nursery rhyme, a children's tale keeps illuminating my imagination: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, with three injuries weighing upon my soul. Yesterday marked one year since Charlie Kirk was assassinated. Today marks twenty-five years since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. And here at home, my wife, Sherrie, has spent more than 300 days bedridden. While being treated for glioblastoma, she was dropped on her head during hospital care, suffering injuries that left her unable to walk. One injury is political and cultural. One is national and collective. One is deeply personal. Each has brought pain. Each has produced loss. And each places the same question before the...
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Colorado’s homelessness and housing funds recorded $153 million in phantom federal money, audit finds
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Colorado’s homelessness and housing funds recorded $153 million in phantom federal money, audit finds

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Colorado wanted more control over its share of federal pandemic aid before the money hit its federal spending deadlines. So in 2024, the state moved it. It pulled hundreds of millions in American Rescue Plan money back out of four state programs, three of them tied to housing and homelessness, and replaced it with state general funds, so it could spend the federal dollars elsewhere before the deadlines ran out. Then the Department of Local Affairs set those funds up in the state's accounting system as if they were still federal. Every time the department spent a state dollar out of the four programs, the system automatically booked a federal reimbursement that was never coming. By the end of the fiscal year the departm...
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Twenty-five years after 9/11, I still miss the America we were in the days after
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Twenty-five years after 9/11, I still miss the America we were in the days after

By Shaina Cole | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice I was on my knees scrubbing stains out of the carpet as I watched it all unfold. This was the fall of 2001. I was 21, three months out of college, working temp jobs while I looked for something permanent. My fiancé and I had been in our rental for a short time. The people before us had left stains ground into the carpet, and I was still working on getting them up.  My usual routine was to eat something, then clean. Just an ordinary Tuesday, and I was in the South, nowhere near New York. I turned the TV on. Breaking news was already running when I sat down.  A plane had struck one of the World Trade Center towers. I picked up the phone and called my mom. I asked her if she was seeing what I was seeing. I don't re...
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A year after Charlie Kirk’s death, have we forgotten what came next?
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A year after Charlie Kirk’s death, have we forgotten what came next?

By Tori Stork (Ganahl) | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice One year ago today, Charlie Kirk was killed. It still feels strange to write those words. I’ve spent a lot of today thinking about Charlie—not just the person the world knew, but the 21-year-old who called me out of nowhere when I was a college student at the University of Oregon. The guy who flew to Eugene, spent months helping our little group of students (mostly in disguise so no one would recognize him), strategized with us in my Jeep, drilled us on messaging and quoted Scripture from memory. Charlie believed in people before most of the world knew their names. He believed in me before I really believed in myself. Years later, after Turning Point had become a national force and millions of people competed f...
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‘I’m not running for me’: The everyman challenging Boesenecker in HD53
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‘I’m not running for me’: The everyman challenging Boesenecker in HD53

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Daniel Frick did not like politics growing up. He thought it was drama and theater, the same way, he figures, most people do. Then his stepdaughter was hit by a car and left permanently disabled, and the family found itself in what he calls the dark corners of the state, where her case sat forgotten. Now he is a Republican running for Colorado House District 53, a Democratic-held Fort Collins seat. By Frick's telling, the district has been blue since 1986. "I'm not running for me. I'm running for Carissa," Frick said. "I'm fighting for Carissa. That's what this whole campaign is about, getting justice, holding people accountable and changing our state's political system so that other people don't end up like Carissa an...
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If they control your ammunition, they control your rifle
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If they control your ammunition, they control your rifle

By Sean M. Pond | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice If you hunt, own a gun, raise livestock or care about the Second Amendment, you need to pay attention to what is happening at the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission. The people coming after hunting have found an easier path than convincing Colorado voters. They can take a so-called citizen petition to an appointed commission and ask that commission to regulate hunters out of the field. They do not have to ban your rifle if they ban the ammunition it fires. That is exactly what one petition now before the Commission is designed to do. The proposal seeks a statewide ban on traditional lead ammunition while taking wildlife. It was filed by 18 organizations and presented by attorneys for Animal Wellness Action and ...
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Xcel’s large load tariff fight: Who will pay for Colorado’s data centers?
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Xcel’s large load tariff fight: Who will pay for Colorado’s data centers?

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice One of the biggest open questions about who pays for Colorado's data center boom is being decided this fall at the Public Utilities Commission, and the answer testimony that frames the fight is already filed. By Aug. 19, intervenors had filed a stack of answer testimony in Proceeding No. 26AL-0137E, Xcel Energy's proposed Large Load Tariff. The case has drawn a crowd. Google is in it. So is Walmart. So is the City and County of Denver, the City of Boulder, the electric cooperative United Power, the state's own energy office, and the commission's trial staff. The evidentiary hearing is set for 5 days across late October, Oct. 21, 22, 26, 27 and 28. A second public comment hearing is set for Oct. 20. The hearing wraps 6...
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