By Quentin Young | editor
“Regardless of the DOJ’s presence, our election procedures and commitment to the voters of Adams County remain unchanged … Our priority is to ensure every eligible voter can confidently cast their ballot, and every valid vote is counted through a secure, transparent, and accessible election process.”
— Adams County Clerk Josh Zygielbaum
People cast general election ballots at the Adams County Human Services Center on Nov. 5, 2024. (Photo by Andrew Fraieli for Colorado Newsline)
By Sara Wilson
Colorado election officials are treating the U.S. Department of Justice’s plan to send election monitors to Adams County for the upcoming midterm elections as a request that requires approval, rather than a mandate, according to correspondence between state and federal officials. The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division first notified Adams County Clerk Josh Zygielbaum on Tuesday that it intends to send monitors on Election Day, Nov. 3. Colorado Deputy of Secretary of State Andrew Kline then sent a letter to the DOJ on Thursday, pointing to state laws that require certain people, such as the DOJ monitors, to be appointed as official observers before they can go into non-public election spaces.
Guard's Hall at 15th and Curtis streets, one of Denver's top entertainment venues in 1876, is pictured in this photo from the 1870s. (Courtesy of Denver Public Library Special Collections, X-18553)
TIMELINE 1876
By Chase Woodruff
As the weather continued cooling off in October 1876, Denver’s Rocky Mountain News looked ahead to what a headline called “our winter campaign.” “Denver promises to be unusually cosmopolitan and lively during the coming winter,” the paper predicted. “Already the town is filling up with strangers, many of them remarkably fine-looking.” The inaugural state Legislature was set to convene in early November, while many others who’d been employed in Colorado’s frontier mining camps during the summer months were now returning to the relative comfort of the capital city.
Voters mark their primary election ballots at Second Presbyterian Church in Little Rock, Arkansas, on March 3, 2026. This year’s statewide ballot measures are written, on average, at a graduate-school reading level, according to a new report. (Photo by John Sykes/Arkansas Advocate)
By Anna Claire Vollers
This year’s statewide ballot measures are written, on average, at a graduate-school reading level, according to a new report. The readability of 2026’s ballot questions — which ask voters to weigh in on issues as varied as abortion, property taxes, voter ID and firearms — varies by state, political data tracking nonprofit Ballotpedia found in its newest Ballot Measure Readability Report. Title readability ranges from a fifth-grade level for an Idaho question asking voters to choose an official state gun to a 48th-grade level for a Colorado constitutional amendment that would establish a right to hunt and fish, Ballotpedia found.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Colorado priest from Uganda released after 13 months in ICE detention in Aurora | By Lindsey Toomer
Commentary: Proposed grazing rules would hurt Western cattle ranchers | By Sammy Herdman
Dems in Congress say they’re wary Trump won’t accept results of election | By Jonathan Shorman
Commentary: Colorado is way behind on Waymo rules | By Quentin Young
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