Officially, we’re one week out from election day 2008. But, as Kirk Johnson wrote in this article for The New York Times, the process of voting is changing. Colorado voters are increasingly using early voting and vote by mail as options to going to the polling place on election day. It makes a lot of sense, given the combination of an insanely long ballot and the voting fiascos that have plagued our state in the past few election cycles.

I ran into Patty Calhoun at the primary this summer, and talked about how we’re going to miss going down to the polling place and visiting with the residents at the Ivy Manor (now called the Spearly Center) where voting day was the one of the most exciting events of the year. Somehow, that “I Voted” sticker just isn’t the same when it comes from your mail-in ballot, and not from the community-spirit infused volunteer.

The following is my attempt to make sense of an unnaturally long and tedious Colorado ballot. To create this version, I used a Ballot Guide tool provided by Politics West, which works pretty well. I did actually read the ballot amendments that are proposed, and I considered a variety of points of view, including progress now, the denver dailies, bell policy center, squarestate.net, and others.
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