VOTE!

I'm Rachel mains with Crawford Media Group and joining me today is Kim Munson with the Kim Munson show the airs on our sister station AM560. Kim welcome Rachel great to be with you. Great to have you to discuss the 2024 Colorado Voters Ballot Guide. Kim you've done the legwork you know it is voting season this is really necessary for us to really understand the issues I've said to you multiple times they make it confusing. You think right? I think Rachel that people have ballot fatigue as you look at just on the state issues not including any of the local issues or county or school district issues there's 14 issues on the state ballot alone and people are busy they want they want to do their civic duty they want to vote they want to be informed and then you have all of the this chatter out there and all of these campaigns that are coming up people to try to convince them to pass something the probably isn't in our best interest so that's why I did the voter's guide. Yes Kim how many years have you done a voter's guide? I think I started in 2015 and Rachel it was one of the first voter's guides out there now there's all kinds of voter's guides but I think people have come to really trust this because I'm not paid or quote earth to take a position I look at each of these issues as what is best for the individual and also how does that match up with our American idea of limited government where the individual has liberty and so that's my lens that I work on as I put this voters guide together how long does it take you to study the issues hours the hours and hours between Zach my media marketing guy and we put together he put together something beautiful if you've taken a look if you go to my website KimMunson.com just request the guide you all you need to do is put in your name and your email and that way if something changes or some update we can let you know but then you'll get a link you'll receive a link for the one page summation of everything and then also the online version and Zach went through and actually chose historical and Renaissance paintings that had some relevance to the the actual issue and so it makes it somewhat pleasant to go through and do that research but it took us hours and hours. Well thank you for doing this so many of us we don't have time within our busy lives but we want to be good citizens and we want to make sure that we're voting correctly and with the value system that you have and that you talk about on your show now can let's go over we can't we don't have time to go over all of them but let's highlight some really important issues here. Okay let's go through one that was really difficult first of all amendments to the constitution should be very few and far between and there's one two three four five six seven questions on the ballot as amendments to the constitution and I'm a no on all those and we shouldn't be cluttering the constitution with a lot of different amendments but the the first one was difficult for me to take and that was it's a tax a property tax break for unemployable veterans and Rachel as you know I love our veterans I love our military and it's almost like they use use our veterans to get us to pass things that are not good so the underlying issue here well two things is first of all putting people into groups dividing us and then taxing people differently is unfair and it's based in Marxism and so the bottom line though is we really think about it as property taxes are too high and so ultimately what we should do instead of passing amendment G is lower property taxes across the board for everyone that way then are unemployable veterans get a tax break but also we need to lower that for everyone so that's the premise that I took and it was gut wrenching to to take that position but I think it's the right thing to do yeah that's what happens the language with a lot of these amendments it confuses you because you think yeah I love veterans and then if you don't really take the time like you've done to really look at that and have the proper lens we end up voting yes and we don't really know what we voted for right and so that's it's so important to delve into this another one this um let's see is amendment 79 and that would enshrine in our constitution taxpayer funded abortion so this is not really the abortion question uh although that that is certainly part of it but to enshrine in the constitution that taxpayers pay for someone else's abortion that should not be an amendment to the constitution right really good okay what's another one Kim uh this has been one that has actually been supported by a number of Republicans and conservatives and as amendment 80 which is school choice and initially when I read the ballot question of course we love the fact that we could have school choice but we link the text to what you're really voting on because the ballot question is just a summation and if you go to the text the second bullet point uh well the first bullet point says that parents should have the right to direct the education of their children um school choice and that sounds good but the second bullet point says uh children K through 12 have the right to school choice that looks to me like it is boxing parental rights out and when I asked the the organizers that have put this on the ballot I said I'm very concerned about this language and they said well we've talked to our attorneys and they're just fine with it I see this is danger danger to enshrine this in the constitution where it's ambiguous regarding parental rights or does the child have the right to school choice because it is probably well intentioned but poorly written I recommend a no yes really good Kim thank you let's talk about another issue uh let's go to proposition 131 which is ranked choice voting and that is being sold as modernizing our elections are you tired of the parties fighting with each other all that rhetoric and of course people are tired of politics but what rank choice voting would do is basically take away your one person one vote uh it is uh there's actually two questions in this uh ballot question one is first of all what's called jungle primaries so you could have 10 15 20 different people on your ballot first of all Rachel how are you going to research each each and every one of them and then many times politicians don't tell you who they really are right so it would be very difficult to research all of these people in this jungle primary and you can only vote for one but then out of that the top four vote getters then go to the general ballot and you would rank them one two three and four and so you do that and so a person might get 49% of the vote they might be the top vote getter but then there's all these different rounds of computer calculations of the lowest vote counter uh they are removed from the ballot their second and third choice is recalibrated and uh they go through another round and ultimately you could have a candidate that maybe only got 25 or 30% of the vote uh ultimately being declared the winner because of this computer algorithm recalculation very difficult to audit and it really takes away your dilute your vote of the person who you really want to get elected so it's very bad but there's big money that is being put into it last I checked just under 11 million dollars to try to get people to vote for it and people from both sides of the aisle are supporting it which is very disappointing but uh bear in mind that kind of money coming in is not because they want to make sure that we the little guys our voices are heard what will happen is only the rich or the candidates that the rich choose will ever be able to get onto the ballot so I'm a strong no on prop 131 ranked choice voting yeah sounds so confusing and that's a red flag to me it's like I I can't even understand this you know it's like this percentage and that when when it gets real confusing it's like why are we trying to make it confusing simple is always best in my opinion well and I think it was James Madison one of our founding fathers said that at the law should not be so voluminous that we can't understand them right and that's how we've gotten into this position right now we have all these laws and amendments and propositions and we need to have less not more exactly all right Kim what's another issue well I guess I'll go big picture a rapaho county Jefferson County and R.T.D. and Lakewood they are all asking to detabird now taper is our Colorado's taxpayers bill of rights and you hear respondents all the time talk about greedy businessmen or is it Thomas Sol the economist said is it really greedy for me to want to keep more of my own money but so this detaboring would mean that excess revenue above a very generous formula under taper of inflation plus population growth if these entities want to keep that additional revenue then they just need to ask us well they want these questions are saying we don't want to ever have to ask you again and also under a rapaho and Jefferson County they have property tax caps and this would get rid of that as well so the answer on all of those a rapaho county Jefferson County R.T.D. and Lakewood detaboring should be no and the reason is so that you can keep more of your money in your pocket instead of greedy governmental entities wanting to keep it all yeah that's good Kim and I'm talking to Kim Munson the host of the Kim Munson show and you can go to her website Kim Munson.com also we have some great resources including Kim's voter guide if you go to our website 670kltt.com/vote that's 670kltt.com/vote so Kim what's another issue a proposition KK which is an excise tax on firearms and ammunition and this is a direct assault upon the second amendment and what I'm really concerned about is that it is going to make it more expensive particularly for that single mom that might be in a neighborhood that is dangerous and right now we're having our neighborhoods become more and more dangerous and she may want to have a firearm to protect herself and her family this excise tax would make it more difficult for her to do that and so that is why I am really recommending a strong no on proposition KK because it is unconstitutional but it also makes it more difficult for law-biting citizens to protect themselves and the bad guys are not going to pay this tax it's only going to be us the law-biting citizens that would pay it so we're strong no on that as well great what's another issue Kim I would say that this proposition 127 regarding limiting the hunting of predators of big cats and there still will be management of those cat populations but it will be done by government which means we'll be paying taxes to do that right now we have a very healthy management of predators between the Colorado public while wildlife and our hunting industry which brings a lot into the economy and so this is really I think trying to prevent hunters from being able to hunt these big cats and keep those populations in check and Rachel a man hunting predators has been part of the big circle of life since the beginning of time and so when you take that out of the equation then the predator populations grow makes it more dangerous for our livestock producers but it also makes it more dangerous as people like to go to the mountains to hike and so that's a strong no on prop 127 as well and I just want to mention once again you can go to Kim's website KimMunson.com and learn more about her radio program where she talks about these issues daily and has great guests on and you can put your name in and email and sign up for the butter guy as well Kim anything else we can go over we have a couple minutes left okay basically on my voters guide I am recommending a no on all of the state issues except proposition 128 which seemed like it made sense to me that violent offenders would serve most of their sentences before they were eligible for parole that seemed to make sense to me I've had some some people that have reached out and said that know that they would disagree with me on prop proposition 128 but that would still make sense to me so I am a yes on that otherwise I'm recommending no on everything but don't take my word for it look at my reasoning see if it makes sense to you great if if you see it differently I'm not offended I just want you to think about these issues right get us involved in the process thank you so much I've been talking with Kim Munson you can go to her website KimMunson.com learn more about her radio show also go to our website we have a link to Kim's voter guide but we also have more resources at 670kltt.com/vote Rachel thank you