Tag: recall

  DENVER — After nearly five hours of debate on Friday, a bill to reform recall elections by making it possible to use mail-in ballots passed...

Notes from the 69th day of the 2014 legislative session.

This time last year no one cared where Alissa and Adam Vander Veen were registered to vote -- except Jeffery Weston, Alissa's former colleague and assistant elections manager at the El Paso County Clerk and Recorder's office.

What happened? Rivera is a former policeman with no legislative experience, a fact he readily admits. So he asked his experienced colleague, Minority Leader Bill Cadman.

"Considering the recall, the first bill I'm introducing is to repeal the universal background checks and the associated fees," said newly elected Senator George Rivera.

WESTMINSTER, Colo. — In something of a surprise vote, a majority of 66 vacancy commissioners selected Arvada City Councilwoman and former campaign manager Rachel Zenzinger to replace Democratic state Senator Evie Hudak, who resigned on November 27 in the face of a recall effort launched by gun rights groups in reaction to votes she cast in the spring.

State Senator Evie Hudak, a Democrat from a suburban swing district north of Denver, resigned from office Wednesday just days ahead of the deadline on which activists were planning to hand in signatures in support of a special election to recall her from office.

Colorado Democratic state Senate President John Morse speaks his mind and has endured no end of pains recently as a result. But it's a refreshing quality in a lawmaker -- a Colorado tradition that might include Morse, as well as two current, long-shot Republican candidates for governor: state Senator Greg Brophy and notoriously great interviewee, illegal-immigration scourge and former Congressman Tom Tancredo.

The general impression — some call it mythology — of Colorado Springs in the world beyond Colorado Springs is that the southern Front Range city falls politically right of the far right, an Evangelical Republican promised land. That's why the historic effort to recall Colorado Senate President John Morse, a Democrat, for gun-control legislation he supported and helped to pass last spring turns mostly around the question of how well Morse represents his district — or how well he ever could have represented it.

In a year fraught by gun violence across the nation and with the anniversary of the Aurora theater shooting fast approaching, tempers over gun control have flared so high, the issue may invite the state’s first-ever lawmaker-recall votes. The efforts mounted so far have fast made a battleground of Colorado’s local politics, with organizers on both sides accusing each other of harassing petition signers, undermining the democratic process and undercutting hard-won balanced budgets.