It's election day here in the US, so I just took a walk to drop off my ballot.
In my state, they mail you your ballot in advance, and if you do it right away (and have two stamps) you can mail it back. Otherwise, you can drop it off at a polling place. So that's what I did.
We had 56 decisions on this year's ballot in Denver:
9 elections for various offices.
29 judges up for review
3 amendments
8 propositions
4 referred questions
3 initiated ordinances
The different titles depend on if they are about amending the state constitution or statutes, if they were put up to a vote by the state legislature, or if they were brought to a vote by citizens. Also if they are a state issue or a city issue.
The one I hope passes the most is Denver Deserves Sidewalks. Currently, sidewalks are up to the property owner (even tho the sidewalk, if there is one, is not considered their property) to build or maintain, ergo Denver has a really terrible lack of sidewalks, broken sidewalks, sidewalks too narrow for someone in a wheelchair or with a walker. It costs a homeowner thousands of dollars to repair the sidewalk in front of their house, so most just don't do it. The city started a tiny fund a few years back to help low income homeowners with the cost, and one (1) inspector to go around seeing which sidewalks need repair. At their rate of repair and funding, it would take - I shit you not - 400 years to get Denver's sidewalks up to snuff. So this measure is trying to make it the city's responsibility to take care of sidewalks, funded with a property tax. It would then only take 9 years to give us decent sidewalks.
Some people complain that the property tax is too much but y'all, it's a lot less than you'd spend fixing your damn sidewalk.
Anyway, as a lifelong pedestrian I can vouch for how terrible our lack of decent sidewalks is, so I really hope it passes. If the rich people in million dollar homes kill it because they don't wanna pay tax, I'll be pissed.
"But what about the low income homeowners?" I hear you ask. Also on this year's ballot was a vote to extend the exemption on property taxes to military widows. That exemption already applies to disabled military vets, and seniors who have been in their home for 10+ years. That covers a lot of low income homeowners, and in this market, most of us poor people struggle to pay rent and we certainly don't own our homes. And if they're truly low income, they probably need the sidewalks as much as I do, since cars are expensive.
Anyway, that's the one I'm rooting for the most. Fingers crossed we get good sidewalks in this crazy car-centric town!