2024 Abolitionist Ballot Guide.
Colorado Freedom Fund
There’s much more at stake this November than federal contests. In 2024, Colorado voters will decide 14 statewide measures. In our Abolitionist Ballot Guide, CFF focuses on 6 key ballot questions impacting safety, freedom, and fundamental rights. We explain each measure and assess their lberatory vs. oppressive impact, from our perspective as organizers, advocates, and policy experts working to dismantle carceral systems as we move towards collective liberation.
If you can vote, if you do vote: we hope you Vote Like an Abolitionist in this and every election.
Colorado Freedom Fund Opposes:
✘ Amendment I - Limit Constitutional Right to Bail
✘ Proposition 127 - Criminalize Big Cat Hunting
✘ Proposition 128 - Longer Prison Sentences
✘ Proposition 130 - More $$$ to Police
Colorado Freedom Fund Supports:
✔ Amendment J - Repeal Constitutional Marriage Ban
✔ Amendment 79 - Constitutional Right to Abortion
✘ Oppose: Amendment I.
”Constitutional Bail Exception for First Degree Murder.”
Limits Constitutional right to bond based on charge.
Amendment I prohibits judges from setting bond for people charged with first-degree murder, forces people to stay in jail even when the court considers them safe for pretrial release, and deprives Coloradans of our rights to due process and presumption of innocence.
Under Colorado law, all people charged with criminal offenses are eligible to have pretrial bail set by a judge. Whether accused of misdemeanor theft, first degree murder, or any other crime, all people are entitled to due process of law and must be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Amendment I violates these principles by depriving people charged with first degree murder of the constitutional right to have a judge set bond.
In June 2023, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled unanimously that because the state had abolished the death penalty, any person subsequently charged with first-degree murder has a constitutional right to bail. In the months that followed the Smith decision, bond hearings were held across Colorado for people awaiting trial and charged with homicide. At those individualized hearings, courts set vastly different bonds in cases with different circumstances, with bonds ranging from amounts in the low thousands to many millions of dollars.
Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of people were not able to post bond and remained in jail until trial. But because judges could consider cases individually, and because courts found some people should be allowed to remain safely in the community on pretrial release, some Coloradans charged with first degree murder were able to post bond - including people who acted in self-defense, who had virtually no criminal history, and others who the court determined deserved the chance to be free before trial.
Money bond, pretrial incarceration, and overcharging are all powerful tools that prosecutors use to coerce people into guilty pleas. As a result of being able to post bond, Colorado Freedom Fund witnessed people accused of this most serious crime be successful on pretrial release, withstand the intense pressure to plead guilty despite being innocent, and even have their case dismissed entirely. The ability to be considered for pretrial release is particularly critical for criminalized survivors. Often, women accused of murder are victims of long-term abuse; they deserve support and care in community, not further abuse in cages.
Opposing Amendment I does not mean supporting the practice of money bail. To the contrary: opposing Amendment I means advocating for more fairness in a system that has so little. Wealth-based detention is fundamentally unfair; money bail, by design, exacerbates already extreme disparities in America’s racialized criminal injustice system. Whether a bond is set at $5.00 or $5,000,000.00, money bail does not keep us safe. As abolitionists, we seek more freedom and more safety, and we know money bail advances neither. But in a state where money bail remains a primary route to facilitating pretrial liberty, access to that right must not be abolished based on alleged offense type alone.
Due process of law necessitates access to individualized bond hearings. Presumption of innocence dictates that a mere accusation is an insufficient basis to deny a person access to even be considered for pretrial bond. Accordingly, charge alone should never be the basis for denying release. Such is the status of current Colorado law: all Coloradans are eligible to have a judge set pretrial bond. Amendment I will foreclose that option, unnecessarily and unjustly denying certain Coloradans the right to even be considered for pretrial release, and reversing important progress that Colorado made in 2023.
Amendment I leads a dangerous trio (I, 128, 130) of regressive, reactionary, carceral measures guaranteed to expand mass incarceration and decrease community safety. Other progressive organizations who, like Colorado Freedom Fund, firmly oppose this unjust measure include Colorado Working Families Party and COLOR Action Fund. Vote NO on Amendment I.
📘Amendment I → Summary + Analysis | Ballot Title + Text of Measure
Technical note: Colorado Freedom Fund supports the right to a hearing on determination of Proof Evident Presumption Great as separate and distinct from the right to bail. Similarly, CFF takes no position on the provisions of Amendment I that relate to jury selection practices.
✘ Oppose: Proposition 127.
”Prohibit Trophy Hunting.”
Criminalizes hunting of certain big cats.
Proposition 127 creates a new criminal offense for hunting and recreational trapping of bobcats, mountain lions, and lynx; violations are punishable by incarceration up to 364 days.
Being good stewards of our state’s beautiful flora and fauna should be the shared responsibility of all Coloradans. CFF supports environmental justice and ethical conservation, but takes no organizational position on whether or not the activity specified in 127 should be banned. But as abolitionists, we do take a strong stance against expansion of the criminal code to condemn disfavored behavior. As is the case every time Colorado creates a new jailable crime, targeted policing and selective prosecutions will be disproportionately used against poor people with particular danger posed to hunters who are people of color.
Indigenous peoples of the land we call Colorado lived in harmony with nature for centuries, sustaining and thriving without needing codification of hunting limitations into state criminal law. CFF is concerned about the impact of Prop. 127 on hunting rights preserved by the Ute people in the Brunot agreement of 1874, rights still exercised by members of the Ute Mountain Ute and Southern Ute tribes to this day. Additionally, Lynx-hunting is already illegal under both state and federal law.
Non-criminal frameworks like Colorado Parks and Wildlife are better suited to address human engagement with wild cats than are criminal courts. Vote NO on Proposition 127.
📘Prop. 127 → Summary + Analysis | Ballot Title + Text of Measure
✘ Oppose: Proposition 128.
“Parole Eligibility for Crimes of Violence.”
More people, more years in prison, more violence.
Proposition 128 increases the time a person convicted of certain offenses must be incarcerated before then can become eligible for parole, and limits ability to achieve earned time credit in prison.
Prisons do not stop violence; prisons are violence. If more prison time led to more safety, Colorado would be one of the safest states in the safest country on earth. Colorado’s prison industry continues to grow alongside the violence it enacts. Prop. 128 will continue to inflate Colorado’s over $1-billion Department of Corrections budget without a corresponding decrease in violence or interpersonal harm. Colorado deserves real and lasting solutions to violence interruption. Prop. 128 provides neither. Instead, this initiative would force people who served long sentences and who the parole board would have deemed ready to be safely returned to community, to instead spend more years in prison at all of our expense. Prop. 128 further exacerbates the deleterious economic, health, and educational outcomes for families of incarcerated individuals by enacting state violence on many of the very people already most harmed by the state violence of over-policing, over-prosecution, and organized abandonment. Expanding mass incarceration expands violence; it’s time to invest in our people, instead of in their imprisonment. Vote NO on Proposition 128.
📘Prop. 128 → Summary + Analysis | Ballot Title + Text of Measure
Help stop Proposition 128.
Join Coloradans for Smart Justice, a coalition dedicated to creating safer communities.
✘ Oppose: Proposition 130.
“Funding for Law Enforcement.”
More money for cops, less safety for community.
Proposition 130 directs an additional $350,000,000.00 state dollars to increase funding exclusively to policing, while allocating $0 to proven community safety solutions.
All Coloradans deserve to live in safety. Decades of data shows that the best way to increase community safety is to invest in proven solutions that promote wellness and prevent harm, like equitable education, affordable housing, and mental health services. Instead of investing in any measures that actually keep Coloradans safe, Prop. 130 does the opposite: it doubles down on failed carceral policies by directing another unwarranted 350 million dollars to policing. Proponents of Prop. 130 use the misleading claim that it funds “first responders”, when in reality it funds only policing and excludes other first responders like fire fighters, EMTs, and mental health professionals. Colorado already spends more money on law enforcement per capita than 75 percent of U.S. states. It’s time to invest in community and care, not in more cops, courts, and cages. Vote No on Proposition 130.
📘Prop. 130 → Summary + Analysis | Ballot Title + Text of Measure
Help stop Proposition 130.
Join Coloradans for Smart Justice, a coalition dedicated to creating safer communities.
✔ Support: Amendment J.
”Repealing the Definition of Marriage in the Constitution.”
Since 2006, the Colorado constitution has contained a provision limiting marriage to “a union of one man and one woman.” Amendment J will repeal that constitutional definition of marriage.
Fundamental to personal autonomy and family security is the principle that Coloradans should be able to marry, divorce, solemnify, and uncouple without limitations based on gender or sex. Though this value is widely shared by Coloradans, the constitution still reflects the marriage limitation imposed when voters passed Amendment 43 in 2006. Although a 2015 SCOTUS ruling found provisions like Colorado’s to be unconstitutional, that partial protection will disappear if and when SCOTUS overturns Obergefell v. Hodges. As currently amended, our state constitution prohibits marriage access that Coloradans favor. In order to protect freedom to marry, Colorado must repeal existing marriage definitions in both the state constitution and statutes. Now, nearly ten years after Obergefell, as queer and gender non-conforming people continue to face homophobia and transphobia on many fronts, it is past time to protect these rights long denied. By repealing discriminatory language in the Colorado Constitution, Amendment J accomplishes the first of those two goals and moves Colorado that much closer to marriage equality. Vote YES on Amendment J.
📘Amend. J → Summary + Analysis | Ballot Title + Text of Measure
✔ Support: Amendment 79.
”Constitutional Right to Abortion.”
Amendment 79 recognizes the right to abortion as an enumerated right in the Colorado constitution and repeals the state prohibition on use of public funds to pay for abortions.
All Coloradans deserve to be healthy and to have access to healthcare. That entails being free to choose when and if to become parents, free to make medical decisions for one’s own body, and to be able to safely access reproductive healthcare free from state limitations and threats of criminal prosecution. Abortion is healthcare, and as other states are curtailing access to essential healthcare, it is more important than even that Colorado has no limits on abortion access. While abortion restrictions harm all Coloradans, it is pregnant people of color, those who are poor, incarcerated, and who already have less access to care who are most harmed by abortion bans and restrictions. 79 alone will not ensure abortion is always affordable or universally available to all who need it. But by recognizing abortion as a constitutional right and removing the state ban on use of public funds, Colorado will take an important step towards protecting and advancing reproductive rights in our state. Vote YES on Amendment 79.
📘Amend. 79 → Summary + Analysis | Ballot Title + Text of Measure
📘 Colorado Blue Book. The Colorado State Ballot Information Booklet (“Blue Book” ) provides detailed information including summary, analysis, selected arguments for/against, fiscal impact, and full ballot title + complete text of each measure.
Voter registration and eligibility. All people who have lived in Colorado since October 16, 2024, who are US citizens aged 18 by or on election day, and who are not currently in prison serving a felony sentence are eligible to vote. People with felony convictions, on probation and on parole can vote in Colorado. Visit sos.state.co.us/voter to register to vote, or to update/check your voter registration.
Voter + Election Day information. Local election offices can provide voter information, (where to vote, how to register, etc.) + info on what is on your local ballot in addition to the statewide measures:
Voter service + polling centers: are open 7:00 am — 7:00 pm on Election Day.
Ballots are mailed to all registered Colorado voters between October 11 and October 18, 2024.
Same day registration is available in person up to and including Election