Marshall Zelinger on the petition forgery beat for Channel 7 reports that the attorney’s general office is investigating whether signatures gathered for the minimum wage hike ballot initiative were falsified.
We are not handwriting experts, but after looking at the sample showed in Zelinger’s report, have concluded that we did a better job of signing our parent’s name on our report cards when we were seven years old.
Colorado Families for a Fair Wage turned in an impressive 189,419 signatures in July, but only needed 98,492 to make the ballot, which they did last week.
Now we know how they did it.
“When they were checking one of those sections, they found that it appeared to them, just on its face, that possibly someone had filled out each one of the signature lines him or herself, and that it didn’t look like unique handwriting,” said Ben Schler, legal and policy manager for the Elections Division of the Secretary of State’s Office.
At least one of those suspicious signatures was accepted, but it doesn’t appear that officials will be taking any action to remove the question from the ballot.
We eagerly await Zelinger’s next report, knocking on the doors of those alleged signers to see if they did in fact sign.
Will more signature gatherers be blamed? Are arrests forthcoming? We can’t wait to hear the defense, which we predict will be: “What did you expect from minimum wage workers?”