At $14 million and counting, election reform measure is one of Colorado's most expensive ever

With only days remaining in the 2024 election, a sweeping election reform measure backed by some of Colorado’s wealthiest donors and corporations is quickly climbing the charts of the most expensive ballot initiative campaigns in state history.

Proposition 131, supported by the group Colorado Voters First, would abolish party primaries and enact a top-four ranked choice voting system for most state and federal elections. It’s one of six similar ballot measures being pushed across the country this year by Unite America, the Denver-based nonprofit co-chaired by former DaVita CEO Kent Thiry.

The campaign had spent over $14.2 million in support of Proposition 131 through Oct. 23, according to campaign finance disclosures filed with the Colorado secretary of state’s office.

The spending puts Colorado Voters First in rarefied company, as one of only nine statewide issue campaigns in the last 30 years to exceed $10 million in expenditures in a single election cycle. It’s a level of spending typically only reached in ballot fights over proposals that would impact a single business or industry’s bottom line, like national retailer Total Wine’s failed 2022 attempt to deregulate liquor store licensing, or the tobacco industry’s successful opposition to a tax increase in 2016.



https://coloradonewsline.com/2024/10/31/election-reform-measure-colorado-most-expensive/