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Another error from Griswold’s office exposes confidential voter records for 11 days
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Another error from Griswold’s office exposes confidential voter records for 11 days

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice For 11 days in August, the profiles of Colorado voters who had specifically asked the state to keep their information hidden were searchable by anyone who knew where to look and had the information the tool required. These are people the state allows to shield their records because they said public disclosure could expose them or a household member to criminal harassment or bodily harm.  On August 14, an update to the Secretary of State's "find my voter registration" tool removed the setting that kept their records out of public view. The office didn't notice until the late afternoon of August 25. Fifty-nine of those profiles were pulled up before anyone caught the mistake. What broke The change was suppo...
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The Resourcefulness Weapon: Little Bo-Peep 
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, Devotional, Top Stories

The Resourcefulness Weapon: Little Bo-Peep 

By Drake Hunter | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep, and doesn’t know where to find them; leave them alone, and they’ll come home, wagging their tails behind them. Poor Little Bo-Peep would have made a terrible investigator. Imagine asking her a few basic questions: “Ma’am, when did you last see your sheep? Did you search the pasture? Check the gate? Follow their tracks? Talk to anyone who might have seen them?” Apparently, the answer to all of the above would have been no. Her investigative strategy was much simpler: Leave them alone, and they’ll come home. Cute nursery rhyme. Terrible source management. During my years in the Air Force, particularly through my experience with the Office of Special Investigations, I learned the imp...
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Weiser’s Blueprint: The costs the plan leaves out
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Weiser’s Blueprint: The costs the plan leaves out

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Phil Weiser's Colorado Blueprint is full of numbers.  It reports the almost $900 million his office recovered in opioid settlements. It counts the more than $184 million in AmeriCorps funding he sued to recover, and the nearly $32 million his office won from the e-cigarette maker JUUL.  It measures the problems he wants to solve down to the dollar, from the $11.4 billion it says Coloradans lose each year to congested highways and deteriorating roads to the $36.5 billion it credits to outdoor recreation and the adjacent hospitality and travel industries. What the 109-page plan almost never does is say what Weiser's own proposals would cost. The Democrat attorney general, running for governor, proposes a ...
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The Denver school tax question says $44 million. The measure says something larger.
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Local, Top Stories

The Denver school tax question says $44 million. The measure says something larger.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice The question Denver voters will mark this November asks whether to raise Denver Public Schools taxes "up to $44 million." That is the number on the ballot, the number in the district's public materials, and the figure repeated in news coverage of the measure. The $44 million is not a fixed cap on what the tax could raise in the years after. Read the board's resolution, adopted Aug. 13, along with the ballot question it certified, and the $44 million turns out to be an estimate for the first year.  What voters would also authorize is a permanent change to the ceiling on how much the district can collect through its operational overrides — a ceiling written as a share of the district's total program funding, not ...
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A socialist endorsement for mayor: What Denver DSA’s backing of Shontel Lewis means.
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Local, Top Stories

A socialist endorsement for mayor: What Denver DSA’s backing of Shontel Lewis means.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Denver's Democratic Socialists of America chapter has picked a candidate in the 2027 race for mayor. In an August 25 release, the chapter said it was "proud to announce their endorsement of Councilwoman Shontel M. Lewis for Mayor of Denver in the 2027 election." The endorsement comes from the chapter itself, in its own words. What is worth slowing down on is the word itself. For DSA, an endorsement is not a pat on the back. It is a category with rules attached, and the rules are written down. The candidate Lewis is a first-term councilmember for District 8, a seat that runs through Park Hill and parts of East Colfax.  She filed an affidavit in July to run for mayor in the April 6, 2027, municipal election, a...
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What the Supreme Court did, and did not do, on Trump’s mail-ballot order
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Rocky Mountain Voice, National, Top Stories

What the Supreme Court did, and did not do, on Trump’s mail-ballot order

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice The Supreme Court handed the Trump administration a win Monday on mail-in voting, and the headlines said so. But for a Colorado voter, nothing has changed yet. The state remains set to send November ballots under existing rules, because a second court order the justices did not touch still blocks the part of the president's plan most directly tied to how voters receive their ballots. That gap between the headline and the effect is the story. The Court cleared one obstacle in Trump's path. It did not rule that his election order is legal, and it did not change how Coloradans get their ballots this fall. What it means for Colorado now Colorado is not a bystander in the case. It is one of the plaintiffs that brought th...
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Three federal cases test whether Colorado treats gun rights as policy or as a limit on government
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

Three federal cases test whether Colorado treats gun rights as policy or as a limit on government

By C. J. Garbo | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Colorado has spent more than a generation treating the Second Amendment as a public-policy question. That is the first mistake. The Bill of Rights does not identify subjects upon which government may act whenever legislators believe their intentions are sufficiently benevolent. It identifies areas in which governmental power is constrained. The distinction is fundamental. A constitutional right does not exist at the pleasure of a legislative majority, nor does its force rise and fall with polling, tragedy, political fashion, or the confidence of public officials in their own judgment. This is particularly important when discussing firearms because the Second Amendment was never merely an eighteenth-century hunting prov...
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DougCo’s charter proposal protects schools from competition, not choice
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, Local, Top Stories

DougCo’s charter proposal protects schools from competition, not choice

By Kim Gilmartin | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Douglas County has long been known as a community that values school choice, which is one reason a resolution recently advanced by the Douglas County School District (DCSD) Board of Education deserves much more attention than it has received. The resolution, submitted to the Colorado Association of School Boards (CASB), asks for changes to Colorado’s Charter Schools Act that would give local boards more authority to consider how a new charter school might affect schools that already exist. CASB has now published the proposal as Resolution #3, submitted by the DCSD Board of Education, for consideration at its September Delegate Assembly. The language matters. The resolution would allow local boards to consider the “educa...
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A fire chief lost his free speech case. The day after, he published a book.
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

A fire chief lost his free speech case. The day after, he published a book.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Erik Holt read the opinion the morning it came down on July 7 at 9 a.m. Three federal judges had decided that when the former Florissant fire chief handed election surveillance footage to a criminal investigator examining alleged misconduct in the board's election, he was doing his job, not speaking as a citizen.  That single finding ended his case. It meant the federal courts would never reach whether the board fired him in retaliation. He wrote the last chapter of his book that day. He submitted it for publishing the next. "I used the very First Amendment that the court said I didn't have to publish a book and tell my story," Holt said. RMV has followed Holt's case since November 2025, in reports on the su...
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