Ballot Measures 2026

Amendment 82 is an intentionally misleading measure that was put on the ballot by a network of out-of-state special interests to lock a permanent new "right" for corporate polluters into our constitution. 82 will handcuff Colorado's ability to hold these polluters accountable, and give them a powerful new tool to overturn our commonsense rules that limit toxic water pollution and methane gas fracking near our homes and schools.

Buying and selling gas for cooking and heating is already legal in Colorado today. But what we ALSO have right now are protections for gas explosions, safety and inspection requirements, limits on how much people can be charged for gas infrastructure, and distance requirements from fracking operations. THOSE things are under threat with a measure like this. 

This measure was never about protecting your stove. It permanently locks a special right for one industry into our constitution.
 

The industry's own trade group, Coloradans for Responsible Energy Development, has said publicly that it does not support Amendment 82 and has no relationship with Advance Colorado, the dark money group that is behind this measure. Buying and selling natural gas is already legal in Colorado today, for everyone, including the industry itself. Learn more about Advance Colorado here. 

Advance Colorado's funding is so opaque that a local news outlet had to do a deep dive into their funding network. Independent reporting has traced its money through pass-through nonprofits back to billionaire donors including Phil Anschutz. Advance Colorado also funds a think tank called the Common Sense Institute, which produces research supporting its initiatives, and Anschutz's own newspapers then cover that research as if it were independent. 

In 2022 alone, roughly $9 million of the $11 million moving through that network was anonymous. That's the dark money we're talking about. And — they’re the ones who put this on the ballot, not us. It’s worth asking what they think they’re going to get out of it. 

No state has ever put a right to methane gas into its constitution. 27 states restrict local governments from limiting gas use, but every one of those laws is statutory, passed by a legislature, and nearly all are in Republican-led states. So, this would be a new chapter for Colorado, and a terrible precedent for our state to set, given that this model could have ripple effects in other states with similar citizen initiative pathways to the ballot. 

Coloradans want energy solutions that are affordable, reliable, and protect our clean air and water—and that means scaling up clean energy. 

Amendment 82 doesn’t lower utility bills or protect families from pollution. Amendment 82 rewrites our state constitution to force us to pay more of our hard-earned money to methane gas companies and monopoly utilities, whether we want to or not. Coloradans want solutions that cut costs, protect our way of life, and stop letting polluters off the hook. That’s where our focus should be and it starts by voting no on Amendment 82
 

Buying and selling natural gas is already legal in Colorado, and people's utility bills are still too high regardless. Nothing in Amendment 82 requires any company to lower prices. Consumer choice is not impaired right now. 

What it actually does is give monopoly utility companies a new constitutional "right to sell" that they will use to justify raising your gas and electric bills further, to pay for new pipelines and hookups that may serve someone else entirely, or things you didn’t ask for and don’t want – such as massive new data centers.
 

Colorado state policy already encourages efficient electric equipment over fossil-fuel equipment, specifically to cut indoor air pollution and to reduce the contributions to climate change that are driving drought, reduced snowpack, and wildfire risk in our state. 

This isn't a mandate on any individual customer. It's a policy direction the state has already chosen for public health and climate reasons, and Amendment 82 would carve one industry out of that broader effort permanently, forcing us to continue using a product even after it becomes inefficient, obsolete, or incredibly expensive to continue using. 
 

No customer is being required to switch equipment under current law.

The only way to guarantee that customers who choose to stay on gas never face escalating costs is to sharply limit new investment in the gas system itself. Framing this as "customers switching are the problem" obscures how much gas utilities are spending year over year on system expansion, expansion that gets charged back to everyone on the system, including the people who never asked for it.
 

Amendment 83 is an amendment to Colorado’s constitution that claims to establish the right to hunt and fish wildlife, including through the use of undefined “traditional methods.” Funded and backed by a national campaign and out-of-state special interests (that have pushed nearly identical language in states across the country), it also places into the Constitution that hunting and fishing shall be the “the preferred means” of managing wildlife populations and limits the authority of Colorado agencies and the General Assembly to pass laws regulating hunting, fishing, and wildlife management only “if the law is necessary for sound scientific wildlife conservation and management, public safety, or to preserve the future of hunting and fishing opportunities for all species statewide." 

Passing Amendment 83 would make a permanent, high-stakes change to Colorado’s Constitution. Although hunting and fishing are already fully legal here, by enshrining hunting and fishing as the "preferred means" of managing wildlife, a “yes” vote would tie the hands of wildlife biologists and elected officials who may need other tools to manage populations responsibly - which is the opposite of science-based management. This is much more than a simple policy change once locked into the Constitution. It can't be easily adjusted if it has unintended consequences for wildlife. A “yes” vote could also impact Coloradans' ability to shape wildlife policy through the normal democratic process by potentially restricting citizens from using the statutory ballot initiative process for measures related to wildlife protection, management and hunting. 

No, not at all. Hunting and fishing are already legal in Colorado and fully protected under existing state statute, which says, “The state shall utilize hunting, trapping and fishing as the primary methods of effecting necessary wildlife harvests.” C.R.S. 33-1-101 (2026). A NO vote simply states that you do not support amending the constitution with the preemptive, anti-democratic language of Amendment 83. 

Precisely because they hunt and fish. Hunters and anglers have the most at stake in getting wildlife management right, and amendment 83 could make that harder, not easier. Hunting and fishing are already fully legal and protected under Colorado law, so 83 doesn't add any new protection sportsmen and women don't already have. 

What it does is, 

1. Create Constitutional right to employ cruel and unethical “traditional” methods of take that Coloradans have already banned, which likely will turn the public against hunting
2. Establish a rigid, inflexible preference for killing as the sole means of managing wildlife.  

The cruel, unethical “traditional methods” of fishing, hunting, and harvest that would receive Constitutional protection under 83 include steel-jawed leghold traps, wildlife killing contests, bear baiting, the spring bear hunt, using hounds to hunt bears, and conceivably even using dynamite to catch fish, a method traditionally used in Colorado in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Moreover, sound wildlife management depends on the ability to adapt, using whatever tool the best available science says is most effective for a given species, situation, or emerging threat: whether that's a hunting season, a non-lethal method, or something else. By declaring hunting and fishing the constitutional "primary and preferred means" of management, 83 ties the hands of the wildlife biologists. That's not a win for hunters and anglers. It’s a huge step toward politicizing and freezing wildlife management at a moment when adaptability, not rigidity, is what actually sustains healthy wildlife populations over the long term.

This is exactly the question voters should be asking because there's no good answer. Hunting and fishing are already legal in Colorado and fully protected under existing state statute. If the proponents of Amendment 83 genuinely wanted to reinforce that, they could have pursued a statutory change through the legislature, where it could be debated, amended, and adjusted if problems emerged down the road. By choosing a constitutional amendment, they’re using the least flexible tool available - to enshrine a right that isn't under any threat.

This is because Amendment 83 isn't about protecting hunting and fishing. It's about placing this specific policy—including undefined terms like "traditional methods" of wildlife management and vague standards for when the state can regulate—permanently out of reach of future legislatures, wildlife biologists, and voters themselves. A statute can be fixed if it turns out to have unintended consequences. A constitutional amendment can't, It would take another statewide vote, with a 55% supermajority, just to correct a mistake. That's an awfully high bar to lock in for a right that’s under no actual threat. 

Absolutely not. Hunting and fishing are already legal in Colorado and fully protected under existing state statute. In fact, current law explicitly says that “The state shall utilize hunting, trapping, and fishing as the primary methods of effecting necessary wildlife harvests” (C.R.S. § 33-1-101(4)). There is no need for a constitutional amendment on this. 

Yes, but not in a good way. The amendment purports to protect a right to hunt and fish (which are already protected under state law). It goes much further and declares hunting and fishing the "preferred means" of managing and controlling wildlife populations, a phrase that could tie the hands of the wildlife professionals who currently use a range of science-based tools, including non-lethal coexistence methods. The amendment's vague standard for regulation also creates real uncertainty for biologists and regulators trying to respond quickly to emerging issues like disease outbreaks, invasive species, or human-wildlife conflict in growing communities. 

The term “traditional methods” is not defined anywhere in the initiative and is intentionally vague. The proponents of this amendment use it as code for unpopular and controversial practices, like luring wildlife with food baits, using packs of dogs to chase wildlife, and catching and killing wildlife with cruel and painful traps. In fact, a manual from the Congressional Sportsman’s Foundation, a key organization behind “right to hunt” measures nationwide, explicitly states: “by using a phrase like ‘traditional methods,’ proponents can give a stronger protection to trapping without actually mentioning trapping.” 

Another key proponent of Amendment 83 has been vocal about his desire to reinstate cruel practices that voters themselves have prohibited, including spring bear hunting, hounding of bears, and baiting. Once locked into the constitution, Colorado voters, lawmakers, and wildlife experts would be helpless to stop these cruel practices, which can cause extreme suffering, orphan young animals, and go against values of fair-chase hunting. 

In 1996, Colorado voters passed Amendment 14, which banned the use of cruel leghold traps, body crushing traps, poisons, and snares on public lands. Amendment 83's undefined "traditional methods" language creates a potentially serious risk of conflict with that existing constitutional ban. Powerful and wealthy trapping interests could go to court arguing that a newly created constitutional "right" to hunt and fish "by traditional methods" overrides or narrows the voter-approved trapping ban, opening the door to reintroducing leghold traps and other practices Coloradans already voted to prohibit nearly 30 years ago. As stated above, the proponents have been clear to emphasize using the phrase “traditional methods” as a code word to include trapping, without having to actually state the word because it is so widely opposed by the public.

By enshrining hunting and fishing as the constitutional "preferred means" of wildlife management and requiring any regulation to clear an undefined "reasonable and necessary" hurdle, Amendment 83 raises the legal bar for any future wildlife protection that isn't hunting-related, whether that's a ban on a cruel practice, a new species protection, or a citizen-led ballot measure (like the one Coloradans used to outlaw leghold traps in 1996). Coloradans seeking similar protections would now have to overcome a competing constitutional right rather than working with elected officials to pass a statute or with agency biologists and the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission to pass a regulation.

As this would be locked into the Constitution rather than left as statute, if 83 turns out to conflict with a wildlife protection Coloradans want, there isn't a simple legislative fix. It would require another statewide vote and another 55% supermajority, making it far more difficult for future generations of voters, wildlife experts, and lawmakers to adapt protections as science, values, and circumstances change.

Yes, it could affect the ability of citizens to use the ballot initiative process on wildlife protection issues. First, by guaranteeing in Colorado’s constitution the ability of hunters to use vague “traditional methods,” and that hunting is the “preferred means of responsibly managing” wildlife, Amendment 83 would effectively prevent citizens from advancing a ballot measure that seeks to prevent widely opposed, cruel and outdated practices like trapping, baiting and the use of hounds to pursue wildlife. And second, by explicitly omitting the ballot initiative in its section authorizing the Colorado legislature and the Parks and Wildlife Commission to enact limited laws or rules on wildlife management, Amendment 83 seems to seek to preclude the use of the ballot initiative from the wildlife policymaking process altogether. The use of direct democracy and the right to appeal to fellow voters on any matter of their own choosing is a long-held and valued part of Colorado’s history. It should be protected, not deliberately obstructed by special interests.