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Comment by Chardok | Hacker News Reader

But Colorado is unique in that town and cities in the state have been able to vote locally on whether to overturn this ISP-lobbying-for-law

Once again Colorado has impressed me on the level of pragmatism they show in their state laws. They have been looking very politically healthy compared to the rest of the US, in my opinion, and I think it is going to pay off for them in the near future.

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We have a lot of citizen involvement. You see it in these kind of local activities and overrides, but it goes to the state level ballot initiatives as well.

Sadly, there are some inroads against it. In a rare show of bipartisanship, both the Republican and Democratic parties supported this 'Raise the Bar' initiative to make it more difficult to add initiatives to the state ballot. It doesn't remove the right, but it requires a lot more organization by requiring 2% voter signatures from each state district within a 60 day collection window.

It sucks, but I'm not too distraught. A little more authority was ceded to the political parties but I still have faith that the citizenry are active and involved. We don't all believe the same thing (it's a swing state), but at least we act.

What I absolutely love is the freedom to be independent. As an independent voter, I can vote in the primary for any of the political parties, as long as I only vote once. I don't need to pre-register for that party to be eligible. There are a lot of other improvements to the electoral process we could potentially make, but I'm glad we at least pulled down this low hanging fruit as a first step.

> make it more difficult to add initiatives to the state ballot ... It sucks

Despite a noble history and many success stories, ballot initiatives seem just as corruptible as the parties and perhaps more dangerous with the amount of fake news and propaganda that social networks have enabled.

2% from each district sounds like an absurdly high barrier. Can you imagine how hard it would be to hire enough people just to say hello to 2% of Colorado in 60 days? I think you're underestimating the magnitude of this.

It does seem like a lot but I havent done canvassing before

5.5 mil people about 110k signatures.

Colorado only has 7 districts, 2 (eastside and westside of the state) comprise of almost 40% of the landmass each. 1 district to the north of denver and one to the south. 3 that make up the denver metropolis.

It would be alot but its the 2 outside districts that probably would be the toughest to get

Perhaps I should have clarified that to 'state senate districts', of which there are 35.

https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/maps/sldu/st08_co.html

We need 10% in BC. But that's for a referendum, I think. Only happened once in my lifetime, when the old people got worked up over a harmonized sales tax.

>What I absolutely love is the freedom to be independent. As an independent voter, I can vote in the primary for any of the political parties, as long as I only vote once. I don't need to pre-register for that party to be eligible.

This was added last year and there hasn't been a presidential primary where this has happened yet. The republican party might even skip the caucus/primary again and appoint their own candidate.

To me it looks like a somewhat balanced mix of liberals and conservatives, both with a bit of a libertarian/federalist streak. Not a lot of other states seem to look like that right now.

I'd argue that Alaska does. Strong libertarian streak for sure, and the current governor and lieutenant governor are a consensus pairing of a moderate Republican governor and a Democratic lieutenant.

Hopefully get to vote on all the bribes Denver offered Amazon. I for one would make them fix I-70 and I-25 as a condition of moving here.

I would go farther and make them contribute to the rolling out of more light rail. Especially along 36 to boulder.

Why? Lightrail is a pretty big disaster in terms of efficient commuting with stops every block. I tried to ride the bus and then lightrail downtown but the commute was twice as long as if I just drove (45 minutes to an hour because the bus/rail weren't synced perfectly)

Agreed. I wouldn't be surprised to see Hickenlooper develop a more significant national profile.

I lost a lot of respect for Hickenlooper after he waffled on a death penalty decision pushing it off for the next governor. I could have accepted a decision in either direction, but he chose to not make a decision at all. When you are elected the top official in the State, you're expected to make hard decisions. He failed.

http://www.denverpost.com/2013/05/22/nathan-dunlap-granted-t...

And the red light bill with a head scratcher veto.

https://www.colorado.gov/gov-hickenlooper-vetoes-%E2%80%9Cre...

His explanation is at https://www.colorado.gov/governor/sites/default/files/legisl...

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