Colorado voters, of all people, voted for ballot measures that would have required that sex, not fuzzy notions of gender identity, govern decisions on matters like boys playing in girls' sports.
After a few days of victory celebrations in which people like me rode the high of actually winning a battle like this in a state like Colorado, we should have expected that political gravity would reassert itself and the victory would, at the very least, be partial, and at the most be overturned.
Four ballot measures backed by conservatives passed, three by close margins, and one by an overwhelming margin — putting child sex traffickers in jail for life is, unsurprisingly, very popular outside San Francisco.
They won while being outspent more than 20 to 1. No help from the Republican Party or big conservative think tanks, either. This was all grassroots. Similar victories were seen last night in Washington, Arizona, and Nebraska. Defeating gender insanity is the biggest winning issue for conservatives. Conservative parties everywhere should take note that common sense measures to protect kids will win even in deep blue states.
— Billboard Chris 🌎 (@BillboardChris) November 4, 2026
Massive victories in Colorado!
Not by politicians. By people who took matters into their own hands.
@Erin4Parents, with virtually no money, led a team of volunteers to collect more than 500,000 signatures.
They got three child protection measures on the ballot, and three victories!
• No more gender surgeries on kids.
• Girls’ sports protected.
• Life in prison without parole for child sex traffickers.
They won while being outspent more than 20 to 1.
No help from the Republican Party or big conservative think tanks, either. This was all grassroots.
Similar victories were seen last night in Washington, Arizona, and Nebraska.
Defeating gender insanity is the biggest winning issue for conservatives.
Conservative parties everywhere should take note that common sense measures to protect kids will win even in deep blue states.
The votes on these measures in Colorado and similar ones around the country were a ray of sunshine on an otherwise cloudy day last Wednesday, and we deserved to be pleased with those victories.
But this is Colorado, and the ballot measures were not Constitutional Amendments, but the passage of statutes proposed by citizens. And statutes can be changed, and not just by citizens. The legislature has the final say, and it looks ready to say "No, thank you" to some or all parts of these statutes.
Phil Weiser and statehouse Democrats are already planning tweaks to Colorado ballot measures on fentanyl, transgender youth https://t.co/zUBU5KnScQ
— The Colorado Sun (@ColoradoSun) November 5, 2026
The legislature has a history of "tweaking" the statutes, and with good reason in some cases. Statutes are drafted in the stilted language that they are because making law is hard and precise work, and there is a reason why committee after committee considers them, and it's not only because everybody wants to put their stamp on a bill. So it's no surprise that the legislature would amend the bills to make them fit comfortably in with other statutes, consider budget matters that the citizen statutes leave out, and tweak them a bit.
But overturning them wholesale, or dramatically changing the intent, is a different matter, and it sure seems likely the legislature will consider doing precisely that in these cases. In only three out of 33 ballot measures has the legislature made major changes, and this year two of the measures face effective repeal; one will probably get a dramatic rewrite (the fentanyl sentencing measure); and only the child trafficking measure will likely survive with modest changes.
And, unlike in some years, the political cost of snubbing the voters looks to be low because the voters gave Democrats another signal: supermajorities in the legislature, which makes the powers that be feel all warm and fuzzy. When you have all the power, why worry about what voters think? Lauren Boebert even lost!
Gov.-elect Phil Weiser and leading Democrats in the Colorado legislature are already discussing how to tweak four conservative ballot measures that appear to have been approved by voters this year, including ones banning transgender youth from gendered school and college sports and preventing kids from getting surgery altering their biological sex characteristics.
The other two measures would increase penalties for the possession and sale of fentanyl and make child sex trafficking punishable by life in prison.
Propositions 132 (the fentanyl measure), 133 (the sex trafficking initiative), 134 (the sports ballot question) and 135 (the measure dealing with gender-affirming surgery) can be overturned or tweaked with a simple majority vote of the state legislature.
In a political split screen on Election Day, Colorado voters passed those ballot measures but also elected Weiser by a historic margin and handed Democrats supermajorities in both the state House and Senate, giving them more than enough votes to tweak the initiatives or undo them altogether.
The Democrats have a trifecta, with a Democrat governor who won by 28 points and supermajorities in both houses. If you have that much political capital, you want to spend it, and trans (and all alphabet issues) are top Democrat priorities in the state. This is the state where baking a cake for gay weddings is considered mandatory by the government, even after the Supreme Court slapped them down.
It's obvious that the Democrats want to water down, and perhaps even overturn, these measures in whole or in part; what isn't obvious is exactly how. The Democrat caucuses haven't met to hash all the details out, and the child sex trafficking measure won with over 60 percent, and it's a bad look to seem to be pro-pedophilic prostitution, unless you are Scott Wiener, in which case your constituents are all for it.
Weiser, Colorado’s current attorney general, said on the campaign trail that propositions 134 and 135 in particular would have to be addressed by the legislature if voters approved them. “The legislature is going to have to fix it and provide a much more human and sound approach,” he said in June.
On Wednesday, speaking to reporters after he won the governor’s race, Weiser doubled down.
“We’re going to have to take a look at these anti-trans measures and what adjustments are necessary and appropriate,” he said.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser speaks to reporters for the first time after being elected governor. Weiser, a Democrat, announced his transition during the news conference on Wednesday in Denver. (Jesse Paul, The Colorado Sun)
Weiser said, for example, that he doesn’t think it’s acceptable to make every child and young adult playing on gendered sports teams (Proposition 134 applies to athletics for college students as well as youth) get checked for their biological sex.
The measure doesn’t mention genital checks, but opponents have argued that’s where it could lead. [I vote for vivisection, because how else can you be certain?]
Weiser didn’t offer specifics on his plans for the ballot measures, saying it was too soon to comment on how Democrats may respond. But their options range from full repeal to minor alterations.
The initiative, which defines girls and boys based on reproductive organs and requires that student athletes play on teams corresponding to those definitions, leaves enforcement up to the state’s education commissioner. It does not say how students would get checked or what would happen if a parent or fellow student questioned whether an athlete was playing on the correct team.
We are only a week out from the election, and fewer days since the passage of these measures was declared, so it's hard to say what the Democrats will do and how far they will go to water down or even overturn the will of the voters. They can easily argue that their supermajorities provide a mandate, and if they trot out idiotic claims such as the "genital inspection" crap, they can sound all empathetic. And by the next election, it will all be in the rearview mirror, right?
Basking in the glow of victory is enjoyable, but perhaps we should have prepared for the Democrats to stomp on us. What do they have to fear?
In short, the victory is at best at risk, and likely will wind up being less than total; it could even be annulled.
It's Colorado. We should have expected our Rocky Mountain High was due to reduced oxygen.
Editor's Note: The Democrats are doing everything in their power to undermine the integrity of our elections.
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