April 10, 2013

My prediction for this election: Voters will vote against … themselves.

Voters will elect Democrats to run virtually everything — and then approve ballot measures telling those Democrats to stop doing virtually everything.

Democrats for office. Limited government for policy. Colorado has reinvented ticket splitting without the inconvenience of electing Republicans.

The new ticket splitting

We used to split tickets the old-fashioned way. The same Coloradan might vote for a Democratic governor such as Dick Lamm or Roy Romer and a Republican senator such as Bill Armstrong or Hank Brown.

Voters often made sure at least one legislative chamber belonged to the party opposing the guy in the governor’s mansion.

The experts called it inconsistency. Voters called it adult supervision.

But that was then. Today, Coloradans just vote for Democrats. Years of one-party control have made the state less affordable, more bureaucratic and less tolerant — and voters are feeling it.

That will change how they vote this fall, just not in the way Republicans hope.

Coloradans will continue electing Democrats to every statewide office. They could easily hand the party veto-proof supermajorities in both the state House and Senate.

And these won’t merely be more Democrats. They will include more socialists disguised as Democrats: woke, economy-crippling, power-hungry leftists eager to engineer our lives for our own good — and charge us for the privilege.

So you might reasonably conclude Colorado voters want more taxes, more regulation and more restrictions.

I don’t think they do.

What they want is “not Republican.” More specifically: not Trump and not religious conservatives. They are repelled by the Republican brand. That’s not to be confused with swooning for Democrats.

Their votes on ballot issues will tell the real story.

With a baker’s dozen of citizen initiatives before them, Coloradans will say no to Republican candidates but might say yes to freedom, free markets and other suspiciously Republican-ish ideas.

Dissonance in the voting booth

Consider transgender policy: Voters will elect more progressive lawmakers like those who have outlawed “misgendering,” required schools to conceal a child’s transition from parents and mandated trans indoctrination in classrooms.

Those same voters will approve Proposition 134, preventing biological boys from competing on girls’ sports teams.

Elect crazed Democrats and then reverse what they do. Because, especially for suburban voters, this is more acceptable than electing Republicans.

Proposition 135 could also sneak through, preventing doctors from amputating healthy body parts from children in the name of transitioning. What a middle finger to the candidates they will be putting into office.

The message: “We dislike your policies. Please return immediately to the Capitol and make more of them.”

Taxes could produce the same routine.

Ever since the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights passed, the legislature has regularly returned like a child who has already been told there will be no more ice cream: Can we keep your tax refund now?

How about now? Now!?

If history is any guide and Prop NN joins the ash heap of anti-TABOR measures, it will again demonstrate Coloradans trust Democrats with a desk at the Capitol considerably more than they trust them with the contents of a wallet.

Amendment 87, the graduated income tax, could also fail as voters learn it isn’t indexed to inflation. If it passes, eventually everyone will pay close to double the current income-tax rate.

If it fails, voters will have delivered another “kiss my ass” to the left while voting, um, for the left.

Energy offers another opportunity as our Democrats have garroted fossil fuels. Yet voters may put a “right to natural gas” into the state constitution while reelecting the team trying to annihilate natural gas.

That’s like hiring an arsonist but passing a house rule against matches.

The legislature, the current administration and his husband have pursued a radical animal-rights agenda that antagonizes ranchers and hunters. Meanwhile, voters are likely to approve the right to hunt and fish.

And then there’s voter ID.

Every poll shows voters want it, including nearly 80% of Democrats. So of course, the Democratic legislature will never enact it. Voters will do the job that the people they keep putting into office won’t. Amendment 84, requiring identification for mail-in ballots, should pass easily.

Coloradans no longer split their tickets between Democrats and Republicans. They have devised something stranger: elect Democrats, then use citizen initiatives to protect themselves from Democratic policies.

So, Democrats for office and Republicans for policy?