Denver's November 2026 Ballot

Denver's coordinated election is November 3, 2026. Alongside the statewide races, city voters decide a 20-year utility franchise, two charter amendments that reshape how police discipline and city audits work, a change to how often Denver writes its budget, and the only citizen-initiated measure to qualify this year. Here is what each one does and where it touches our platform.

Also on this ballot: the at-large City Council special election. See the Council Candidate Tracker.

Ballot letters had not been published when this page was last reviewed in September 2026. Denver assigns letters (2A, 2B, and so on) to referred questions and numbers to initiated ordinances when the Clerk and Recorder certifies ballot content, and the official text arrives in the ballot information booklet mailed before the election. We describe each measure by subject until the letters are set. Eight municipal measures are reported to be headed to this ballot; the five below are the ones whose substance is on the public record so far.

Xcel Energy Franchise Renewal

Referred by City Council, 10–2, on July 27, 2026. The biggest dollar figure on the ballot.

A 20-year franchise, through 2046

Council-referred franchise question
~$180M/year

What It Does

  • A franchise is the contract that lets Xcel run poles, wires, and gas lines in city streets and rights-of-way. Denver's current agreement expires December 31, 2026, and under the city charter a new one cannot take effect without voter approval. A yes vote grants Xcel the franchise through 2046.
  • The city puts the package at roughly $180 million a year in combined value: a 3% franchise fee worth about $34 million annually, roughly $10 million a year toward burying overhead power lines, and a one-time $2.5 million shareholder-funded contribution for bill assistance. The franchise fee is collected on customer bills and flows into the city's general fund.
  • This is the second attempt. Council rejected an earlier version 7–6 in August 2025, which sent the city back to negotiate and pushed the question past the 2025 ballot. Councilmembers Shontel Lewis and Sarah Parady cast the two no votes on referring the current deal.

Where It Touches Our Platform

  • A franchise is the main leverage a city has over a monopoly utility, and a 20-year term sets the terms of Denver's energy transition past the city's own 2040 climate targets. Undergrounding money, rate advocacy, and any commitment to clean generation are negotiated here or not at all. (See Climate & Environment and Power Reliability.)
  • The bill-assistance piece is one-time and shareholder-funded, not a permanent affordability program, and the franchise fee itself is passed through to customers on their bills. Both are worth weighing against Xcel's rate increases.
  • A no vote does not turn off the lights. It sends the city back to the table, as the 2025 rejection did, and keeps municipalization and shorter-term agreements on the table as alternatives.

Civil Service Charter Amendments

Referred by City Council. Changes the charter rules governing police and fire hiring, discipline, and command structure.

Modernizing the Civil Service Commission

Council-referred charter amendment

What It Does

  • Rewrites the charter provisions governing the Civil Service Commission and the classified service for police officers and firefighters. It removes the citizenship requirement for serving as a commissioner, revises disciplinary timelines, and adjusts probationary periods for officers and firefighters who take approved military or medical leave.
  • It also eliminates the charter-level caps on how many command staff positions the police and fire departments may have, moving that decision out of the charter and into the departments and the budget process.

Where It Touches Our Platform

  • Disciplinary timelines are accountability infrastructure. Longer windows give investigators time to build a case; shorter ones protect officers from indefinite exposure. Read the actual timeline change before deciding — the direction matters more than the word "modernize." (See Public Safety.)
  • Dropping the citizenship requirement for commissioners opens civic service to immigrant Denverites, consistent with our position that residency, not immigration status, should define who participates in city government. (See Immigration Sanctuary.)
  • Removing command staff caps is a budget question wearing a governance costume: it makes it easier to add senior police and fire positions without returning to voters.

Auditor Subpoena Authority

Referred by City Council. Would write the auditor's subpoena power into the charter.

Subpoena power for audits and wage investigations

Council-referred charter amendment

What It Does

  • Codifies in the city charter the auditor's authority to subpoena records — both for performance audits of entities receiving city money and for labor investigations such as wage theft and prevailing wage cases. That power currently rests on ordinance, which a future council can amend or repeal; the charter can only be changed by voters.
  • The history is not hypothetical: council granted the power in 2021, repealed it during a dispute in 2022, and restored a version covering contractors and nonprofits in 2024. This measure would end that cycle.

Where It Touches Our Platform

  • Denver Labor, housed in the auditor's office, enforces the city minimum wage and recovers stolen wages. An enforcement agency that cannot compel records is asking employers to volunteer evidence against themselves. This is the measure most directly tied to whether our wage policies mean anything in practice. (See $25 Minimum Wage.)
  • It also strengthens oversight of contractors and nonprofits spending public money — the accountability side of every program we propose funding. The standing objections are due process and administrative burden. (See Government Transparency.)

Two-Year Budget Cycle

Referred by City Council. Sponsored by Councilmembers Amanda Sawyer, Shontel Lewis, and Stacie Gilmore as "Budget Together Denver."

Optional biennial budgeting

Council-referred charter amendment

What It Does

  • Lets Denver adopt a budget covering two years at a time instead of one, while keeping the option to return to annual budgeting when revenues are uncertain. Finance officials warned in April 2026 that 2027 revenues are expected to stay flat.

Where It Touches Our Platform

  • A two-year cycle halves the number of budget hearings, and hearings are where residents get their one scheduled chance to argue about city spending. It also gives longer planning horizons to programs that suffer from annual uncertainty, including rental assistance and shelter contracts. Which effect dominates depends on what participation the city builds into the off year. (See Participatory Budgeting and Fiscal Reform.)

Prohibit Force-Feeding Birds Act

Citizen-initiated ordinance from Pro-Animal Colorado — the only measure to reach this ballot by petition.

Banning force-feeding and foie gras sales

Citizen-initiated ordinance
Qualified by petition

What It Does

  • Prohibits the force-feeding of birds within Denver and bans the sale of products derived from the practice, including foie gras. Pro-Animal Colorado filed the petition in June 2025; the Clerk and Recorder certified the signatures as sufficient.

Where It Touches Our Platform

  • Our platform takes no position on this measure. We include it because it is the only citizen-initiated ordinance that qualified this year, and because the route it used — roughly 10,000 valid signatures to bypass City Council — is the same one any tenant, labor, or housing coalition would have to walk to put a policy on the ballot directly.

How to Vote in This Election

  • Election Day is November 3, 2026. Colorado mails a ballot to every active registered voter beginning about three weeks before Election Day; you can also vote in person or use a 24-hour drop box.
  • Colorado allows same-day voter registration. You can register or update your address through Election Day at a voter service center, though registering earlier is what gets a ballot mailed to you. Check your registration and find drop boxes at GoVoteColorado.gov.
  • Local measures sit at the bottom of a long ballot. Statewide races, congressional races, and judicial retention questions come first — and ballots that stop early are how city measures end up decided by a fraction of the people who voted.
  • The at-large City Council special election is on this same ballot, and it has no runoff: whoever gets the most votes wins outright. See our Council Candidate Tracker for the ten candidates.

How We Built This

This is a public-record explainer, not an endorsement or a slate. We describe what each measure does, what it costs, and where it intersects with the policies on our platform, and we say plainly when we have no position. Official ballot language governs — when the Clerk and Recorder publishes the certified ballot and the ballot information booklet, read those before voting.

Last reviewed September 2026. We will add ballot letters, the remaining measures, and results as they are certified. Corrections welcome — email us or open a GitHub issue.

Sources:Denver Elections Division,Brownstein ballot analysis,Colorado Politics,Denver Gazette,Denverite,Ballotpedia, and Pro-Animal Colorado.