Today, five ballot initiatives submitted signatures to the Secretary of State in hopes that they would make it on the ballot. The fact that the oil and gas initiatives, with a rumored “over 100,000 signatures” per initiative, turned in the least number of signatures and nearly missed the deadline speaks to how difficult a sell these two economy-killing initiatives were to the general public.
Each initiative needs 98,942 valid signatures to qualify for the ballot. While most of the initiatives turned in way more signatures than necessary, the very narrow margins leaves little room for error and invites scrutiny in a year that has drawn intense scrutiny of the signature collection process. If any of the below initiatives were to not make the ballot, these two would be the ones.
The Secretary of State has 30 days from date of submission to certify the signatures and send the qualified initiatives to the ballot.
Here’s a run down of the initiatives and how many signatures each turned in:
Amendment 69 (ColoradoCare): 158,000
Fort Collins celebrated #coloradocareyes. 156,000 signatures collected. Single payer on the ballot in 2016 pic.twitter.com/HRUCM6QX5e
— Sue Ferguson (@zamagal7) October 23, 2015
Initiative 75, Local Control/Initiative 78, Setback: Over 100,000 each
Supporters for #oilandgas ballot petitions 75/78 say they have “over 100K” signatures for each, were still collecting this am #copolitics
— Cathy Proctor (@CProctorDenBiz) August 8, 2016
Initiative 96, Raise the Bar (make it harder to change the constitution): 185,000
Raise the Bar dropping off about 185k signatures to make it harder to amend CO constitution @csgazette #copolitics pic.twitter.com/i91cmxOUvm
— Megan Schrader (@CapitolSchrader) August 5, 2016
Initiative 98, open primaries/Initiative 140, presidential primary: 310,000 total
.@curtishubbard turns in signatures for primary & prez primary measures #copolitics pic.twitter.com/7pMSDhm2bD
— Lynn Bartels (@lynn_bartels) August 8, 2016
Initiative 100, Assisted suicide: 160,000
Right-to-die campaign turns in 160,000 signatures to put measure on ballot https://t.co/JvSRD5FlxR #copolitics
— Denver Politics News (@denverpolitics) August 4, 2016
Initiative 101, Minimum wage: 200,000
You need to add increasing the minimum wage. Turned in 200K signs on 7/25. #9news #Copolitics https://t.co/KGFjYGxPZy
— Bell Policy Center (@BellPolicy) August 8, 2016
Initiative 143, Tobacco tax: 164,000
Thrilled to join @HealthyCo2016 this morn to drop off 163,764 signatures to place tobacco tax on ballot #copolitics pic.twitter.com/nbfhUBl59Z
— Jake Williams (@thisjw) August 8, 2016