2024 Proposed County Platform Planks

The El Paso County Democratic Party accepts the State Platform as part of our County Platform.

We support the right for all students to safely identify as who they are (including in gender expression) in the education system.

We support passage by Congress of legislation incorporating into United States statutory law the terms of the United States Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade.

We advocate for the decriminalization of personal use of addictive substances, promoting the transition from punitive responses to compassionate, science-based treatment programs accessible to all. We commit to eradicating the stigma around addiction, understanding it as a health issue requiring empathy, comprehensive care, and community support to foster recovery and wellbeing.

We support El Paso County’s central role in America’s national security community, and are proud to host U.S. Space Command, U.S. Northern Command/NORAD, and the five military installations across our county. All servicemembers and military families stationed in El Paso County deserve access to quality military housing and prompt responses to any complaints, issues, or discrepancies they submit to their landlord or installation leadership.

We support the establishment of Washington, District of Columbia, as the 51st State of the United States. Its population surpasses the populations of the States of Wyoming and Vermont, yet its population is not represented by Senators nor Congressional Representatives.

Should the people of Puerto Rico vote in favor of statehood in the United States of America, we favor their immediate entry as the 51st or 52nd State.

We support the establishment of a Space National Guard so that the thousands of Colorado National Guard servicemembers in space career fields have greater opportunities to advance their career and greater predictability towards deployments and force generation requirements.

While we support the central role of El Paso County’s local industry in ensuring our Servicemembers are properly equipped to defend our nation, we also believe that those Servicemembers are owed a quality product, and taxpayers are owed a fair price for those products. We therefore support federal contracting policies that ensure proper oversight of defense acquisitions programs to guarantee that corporate profits never take priority over our national security or the lives of our Servicemembers.

We recognize that Christian nationalism poses a significant threat to the democratic fabric of the United States. This political movement, cloaked in religious rhetoric, aims to exert theocratic control over our nation’s citizens and institutions. It’s important to clarify that Christian nationalism does not reflect the tenets of Christian faith. Instead, it is a distortion that merges political power with religious identity in a manner that endangers our pluralistic society and democratic values. We are committed to countering this ideology and upholding the constitutional principle of separation of church and state, ensuring that all individuals, regardless of their religious beliefs or non-belief, can live in a society that respects and protects their freedom and rights.

We support passage and implementation, either through adoption by the U.S Supreme Court, by Congressional Legislation, or by the passage of a constitutional amendment, of a mandatory code of professional conduct applicable to the members of the United States Supreme Court, which shall be the same code of professional conduct applicable to all other federal judicial officers.

We support passage of an amendment to the United States Constitution requiring election of the President and the Vice-President of the United States to be based upon national popular vote. We also support passage of an amendment to the United States Constitution limiting the terms of United States Senators to three terms of six years and of Representatives to the United States House of Representatives to five terms of two years. Such an amendment will balance the need for experienced legislators with the need to have independent legislators.

We support full funding of all military equipment, weapons, and supplies and all humanitarian assistance necessary for Ukraine to reclaim its territory taken by the Russian Federation in its illegal 2022 invasion of Ukraine and including the illegal 2014 seizures of the Crimean Peninsula, and the Oblasts of Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia.