(Photo/Southworth Sailor, Flickr)

Last year Colorado earned the gloomy distinction of seeing the nation’s largest increase in children living in poverty. According to a 2008 study published by the Colorado Children’s Campaign, an advocacy organization, the number of poor children in the state jumped by 73 percent between 2000 and 2006. With 180,000 children in poverty (or 15.7 percent of the population), Colorado still does slightly better than the rest of the nation. But the picture looks increasingly grim.

“We have a seen an increasing trend of kids who are below the poverty level. And that was before the economic downturn,” says Megan Ferland, president of the Colorado Children’s Campaign.

“There is a whole host of factors to account for this,” she went on. “Part of it is that we have high drop out rates. We don’t do a good job of graduating our kids from high school. It is hard to make a decent living and care for your family when you don’t have your high school diploma. And we have a decreasing number of jobs that pay a decent living for lower-skilled workers.”

Families in poverty typically have a difficult time meeting their children’s needs. And this tension —deepened by the inability to pay for clothing or food or childcare — may lead to abuse. In fact, says Ferland, children in poverty are nearly seven times more likely to be victims of abuse and neglect.

“In tough economic times there is more stress on the family and a higher instance of substance abuse,” says Becky Miller Updike, director of strategic initiatives at Denver’s Tennyson Center for Children, a treatment home for abused kids. “Those are the drivers. Mom and Dad are stressed out, and it trickles down to the kids. There are more neglect issues. Resources are stretched.”

Though the risk of child abuse increases during difficult times, the Denver Department of Human Services has not seen an uptick in abuse or neglect referrals in the past three years.

According to data prepared for The Colorado Independent, the department received 10,575 referrals — calls to the child abuse hot line — in 2006, compared to 11,349 referrals in 2007 and 11,103 referrals in 2008. People typically call the hot line to report suspected abuse or neglect. But some individuals call the hot line for advice on how to deal with out-of-control children.

Toni Rozanski, director of child welfare services with the Department of Human Services, says that the slight increase in referrals between 2007 and 2008 has little to do with the faltering economy.

“I wouldn’t attribute that growth to poverty,” she says. “There are many things that impact our referrals.”

Rozanski says that her department has no plans to change policy during the difficult economic period.

“We wouldn’t be watching [for abuse] just because of the economy,” she says. “We are set up to respond to any need that arises.”

Though Denver’s data does not show an increase in abuse, the state’s child abuse rates have slowly crept up in recent years. According to the Colorado Children’s Campaign study, rates of child mistreatment increased by 43 percent between 2000 and 2006. In 2006, 10,086 children were abused or neglected and 24 of them died. In 2007, 13 children died.

One high-profile case in Denver last year was that of Chandler Grafner, the 7-year-old boy whose parents were convicted of starving him to death. The Denver Department of Human Services was aware of the case but did not act on a report that he had been removed from school the month before he died.

The boy’s death — and other similar cases– prompted Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter last year to create the Child Welfare Action Group, a coalition of elected officials and advocates dedicated to examining the state’s child welfare system.

The group has recommended more than a dozen changes to the current system, but just a single item will be proposed before the state Legislature this session. That legislation, sponsored by freshman Sen. Linda Newell, a Democrat from Arapahoe County, would mandate caseworkers across the state to be trained in child welfare. But, says Newell, the bill has an uphill battle since the Legislature is currently scrambling to cut $600 million from its overburdened budget.

“The question is, can we do it without a fiscal note? The answer is no,” says Newell, adding that the price tag could amount to $1.6 million. “But we have to find those dollars somewhere.”

Newell says that the price of ignoring child welfare this year could be devastating.

“The state liability exposure is much higher,” she says. “The cost of not doing it is potentially another death, potentially a lawsuit against the caseworker or the department for lack of oversight. If you are pro-family, then you need to look out for the well-being of the state’s families. But the other concern is that the state is wide open in terms of a lawsuit.”

Even so, the state Legislature may end up cutting into existing child welfare programs. According to Senate President Peter Groff, a Democrat from Denver with a long record of backing children’s initiatives, the Legislature may end up scaling back the state’s full day kindergarten program, which was expanded last year to accommodate at-risk youth.

“I think the expansion of programs right now is not something that we can begin to look at unless there are federal dollars attached to them,” says Groff. “But generally those dollars are one-time dollars. If we create a new program, we will have to figure out how to do that ongoing.”

Groff says that whittling away at children’s programs could have long-term consequences.

“The fear is that we are shortchanging our responsibility, which is to give kids the most open and active opportunities to take advantage of their God-given gifts,” he says.

“The long-term impact on the state is that young people are not prepared for the global economy, and they may turn to other ways to handle life’s challenges.”

The short-term impact, on the other hand, may be more battered and neglected kids.

Ritter has convened a seven-member committee to do just that. Larimer County Clerk and Recorder Scott Doyle is one member, and he’s also serving on a separate state board, the Election Reform Commission, that will hash out what went right and wrong with this past election at a meeting on Wednesday.

The committee will present a list of three secretary of state finalists in December. Anyone interested in applying can do so by logging onto Ritter’s Web site.

(Photo/pinklaura, Flickr)

Several people who complained that they were misled into signing on to the proposal also expressed happiness that the measure flopped.

Tracy Sear of Englewood said that she was approached in February by a man collecting signatures to get Amendment 46 onto the ballot. He told her it would restore “equality in the workplace.” When she pressed him on its true intent, he told her it “could” chip away at some preferential treatment programs. Sear asked him again and he admitted that it would eliminate affirmative action. Sear did not sign the petition. But several others did and later filed complaints with Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman’s office. One woman said that a petition circulator told her that affirmative action was due to expire and she should sign to renew it. Another said that a circulator told her that the measure would end discrimination in Colorado.

In September, an administrative law judge threw out these and other charges, saying the complainants did not provide sufficient detail about their allegations.

Sear, for her part, did not re-file her complaint. But she was pleased to hear that Amendment 46 had flopped. “I think it is wonderful,” she said. “But what is ironic about the outcome is that Amendment 46 is so vaguely worded you would have to do quite a poll and a random selection of people to find out why they voted for or against it. The language is so confusing.”

Ward Connerly, who sponsored the failed Colorado measure, as well as successful initiatives in California, Michigan, Washington state and Nebraska, denied charges that petition circulators were instructed to deliberately mislead people. In a wide-ranging interview with the Colorado Independent on Wednesday afternoon, Connerly said that petition circulators were told to be nuanced with their approach to the topic, because the amendment seeks to ban preferential treatment and discrimination in public hiring, contracting and education. That is different than a full-out reversal of affirmative action, he said. Connerly also said that he “can’t respond fully” to the allegations because the campaign hired an outside group, National Ballot Access, to gather signatures.

(Photo/Nil, Flickr)

After a two day post-election limbo, Colorado’s Amendment 46 failed yesterday on a slim margin. The so-called Colorado Civil Rights Initiative is the first anti-affirmative-action amendment propped by California businessman Ward Connerly to make it onto a state ballot and flop.

The significance is not lost on Amendment 46’s detractors. “I am thrilled,” says Melissa Hart, a University of Colorado law professor who co-ran the Vote No on 46 campaign. “Given that everyone kept telling us we couldn’t do it, it is exciting that we did.”

Connerly’s amendments have a strong track record of winning easily once they make it onto the ballot. He passed three similar proposals in California, Michigan and Washington state in years past. But Connerly’s 2008 push to end race and gender preferences in five states this year — called the Super Tuesday for Equal Rights — was largely unsuccessful. In three states — Arizona, Missouri and Oklahoma — the proposal never made it to the ballot. In Colorado it was voted down. But it passed handily in Nebraska on Tuesday.

Hart says that she and others were aware of the difficulty of defeating the ballot amendment. Many voters, she says, found the language confusing and believed that they were upholding affirmative action rather than dismantling it.

“We would have preferred to not have it get on. It was important to us to fight every step of the way to keep the initiative out of our constitution,” she says. “The first step was to keep it off the ballot because past experience showed that once it was on the ballot it was going to be very hard to defeat.”

In September, the Vote No campaign filed suit against against Colorado Civil Rights Initiative organizers and Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman, alleging that Amendment 46 petition circulators buoyed the measure with thousands of invalid signatures. But the group dropped its suit as the election grew near. They were also unsuccessful in putting a counter measure on the ballot.

And though Amendment 46 was mired in allegations that petition circulators misled Colorado voters into signing onto the amendment, the proposal polled extremely well in the weeks ahead of the election.

So what accounts for the historic outcome? Hart says that a well-connected network of volunteers and a “grassroots educational network” stopped the amendment.

“We didn’t have much in the way of financial resources. We did Spanish language TV ads and we did a couple of radio ads. But this was really a grassroots person-to-person educational effort. That made this campaign different from ‘no’ campaigns in other states. They were more focused on advertising in the past. We didn’t have the resources. We had to do it person-to-person.”

The Vote No group raised around $211,570 for its campaign, more than half of it since the end of September in big donations from the Colorado Progressive Coalition and two groups called Civic Participation Campaign, Inc. and Colorado Progressive Action. The Colorado Civil Rights Initiative was almost entirely funded by Ward Connerly’s two nonprofit organizations. He gave upward of $350,000 to the campaign.

Jessica Peck Corry, director of the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, did not return a phone call and an e-mail seeking comment on Amendment 46.

But reached late yesterday afternoon, Connerly said that the amendment likely failed because Colorado voters were overwhelmed with the long ballot and voted no. He also said that people who supported Barack Obama, in particular young people, blacks and Latinos, likely voted against ending racial preferences.

Though Connerly has previously said he intends to move forward with his project to end affirmative action, he told the Colorado Independent that he is turning his focus to prison reform.

California businessman Ward Connerly says he is moving on to other issues after the defeat of his anti-affirmative action ballot measure. (Photo/American Civil Rights Institute)

Anti-affirmative-action guru Ward Connerly will likely halt his nationwide push to end race and gender preferences. Connerly, a part black California businessman, spoke with the Colorado Independent an hour after Amendment 46 toppled by an extremely thin margin.

The so-called Colorado Civil Rights Initiative was the first Connerly amendment to flop after making it onto a state ballot. It was also a key measure in Connerly’s Super Tuesday for Equal Rights campaign, a nationwide thrust to dismantle affirmative action programs in five states this year. In three of those states, the measure failed to make it onto the ballot, and Thursday, after a feverishly close tally, it collapsed in Colorado. Nebraska was the only state this year to approve the proposal.

In a wide-ranging, hour-long phone interview with The Colorado Independent, Connerly said he now intends to turn his focus to prison reform. He downplayed the importance of Colorado’s rejection of a ban on affirmative action programs, and also weighed in on President-elect Barack Obama’s historic win.

When asked how he planned to proceed now that Colorado voters had rejected Amendment 46, Connerly said that he might curb his 12-year-long effort, which produced wins in California, Michigan and Washington state in years past and in Nebraska this year. “Well, I love to read. I love to write. I do have other interests,” he said. “I would like to pursue those things. I would rather do those things than get involved in these initiatives.”

“Contrary to what is said, I don’t need this for my financial well-being. I don’t need it for my psychological well-being,” he added, referring to an allegation that he paid himself $7 million from the two nonprofits that funded his Super Tuesday for Equal Rights campaign. Connerly spent more than $350,000 in Colorado this year, according to campaign finance reports.

But rather than continue the fight against racial preferences, Connerly said he will focus on reforming the criminal justice system. He has developed a passion for the issue because, he said, “I know someone for whom I have great affection who is in this situation. I had to learn a lot more about the system than I ever knew before.”

Connerly said that in the past year, he has contributed “frequently and heavily” to Families against Mandatory Minimums, a national organization dedicated to changing sentencing laws. And he is a proponent of alternatives to incarceration, such as ankle monitors for some convicts.

“I don’t want to mislead you. I don’t want to say I am no longer going to be interested in race equality in our public policies,” he said. “I think this whole business of what we are doing to people who are incarcerated is far more pressing.”

However, Connerly would not concede that the weak returns over his “Super Tuesday” efforts to dismantle affirmative action prompted him to turn his focus to another issue. In fact he went back and forth on characterizing the Amendment 46 result as a loss.

“I sort of felt Wednesday morning at 4:15 a.m. that this would probably be defeated, and I congratulate the other side. We have a different perspective, and they waged a vigorous campaign. It got ugly with the character assassination, and I wish they hadn’t done that,” he said, referring to two Vote No radio ads that called Connerly a “carpetbagger” and were later pulled from the airwaves.

But then he said: “It is up to Jessica Peck Corry and others as to when or if they concede. I am proud of the campaign they waged. The people of Colorado have spoken, and with roughly a million votes on each side, it is hard to say that the issue is settled.” Connerly also credited Corry, the director of the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, with convincing him to launch the proposal in Colorado. Corry did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment. But she refused to admit defeat in a Denver Post article, saying she wanted to wait for the last returns. Late Thursday afternoon, the Rocky Mountain News called the election with 96 percent of the votes in; 50.6 percent of Colorado voters said “no” while 49.4 said “yes.”

In spite of his ambiguity, Connerly did say that Amendment 46 — which performed astoundingly well in polls before the election — failed because Colorado voters were overwhelmed with the massive ballot.

“I think that the fact that there were so many initiatives on the ballot spoke volumes more about this issue than anything else,” he said. “There was a lot of voter fatigue in my view, and they said, ‘Let’s preserve the status quo,’ and they voted ‘no.’”

“A 50-50 vote does not tell either side anything at all. Nothing,” he added, when asked about the legacy of a Colorado loss. “I would not expect the opposition to run off the battlefield if the vote had been 50-50. Nor should they expect us to run away because because of the outcome that there is. You can’t make any decisions based on that kind of situation. Especially in view of the fact that Nebraska won as handily as it did.” Nebraska’s measure passed, 58 percent to 42 percent.

Connerly also said that Obama’s supporters in Colorado likely turned out against his initiative. “I believe that when you have a self-professed, quote, progressive running for president, and he is trying to turn out votes, well, on Election Day a number of those who never voted before were black, Latino and young. That’s what the exit polls clearly showed. Those people are more likely to be opposed to ending what is loosely called affirmative action. I think that is just indisputable.”

Connerly voted for Republican presidential candidate John McCain and said he donated $2,300 to his campaign, even though he was disappointed that McCain showed only lukewarm support for the anti-affirmative-action project. Connerly also said he gave $500 to Obama during the primary because he “was hopeful that Sen. Obama would push the ball up the field a little bit in trying to reduce America’s preoccupation with race.”

Connerly acknowledged the import of Obama’s victory: “This is a defining moment in American history, especially for black people. I didn’t cry as Jesse Jackson did Tuesday night as he witnessed this marvelous, marvelous moment with Sen. Obama making his acceptance speech. I didn’t cry. But I can understand the tears. My heart sang as much as everyone else’s.”

He said he was heartened to hear Obama, who supports affirmative action, tell ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in a 2007 interview that he doesn’t expect his well-off daughters to receive preferential treatment when they apply to universities. “We don’t benefit when people believe our skin color has something to do with who we are,” said Connerly. “Even when society thinks it is doing it for a good reason. You are not helping me. That is my view.”

Colorado voters, on the other hand, think affirmative action still has value. And Connerly won’t be back anytime soon to convince them otherwise.

“I am a pretty active guy, even at 69. And there are other things I would like to accomplish in my life,” he said. “For me to go and try to involve the Colorado Legislature in this issue, well that is not on my list of 100 things I would like to do.”

Stay tuned for more coverage of Colorado’s Amendment 46.

Read more on Colorado Independent’s past reporting on Ward Connerly and his efforts to repeal affirmative action.

This marks the first time that a Ward Connerly supported anti-affirmative action ballot amendment has been struck down by voters. A similar initiative passed in Nebraska on Tuesday.

According to the Rocky, the initiative failed with 50.6 percent of Colorado voters saying ‘no’ and 49.4 percent voting ‘yes.’

Meanwhile, in Nebraska, a similar measure backed by anti-affirmative-action boss Ward Connerly passed handily. However, Time.com notes that “a pending lawsuit over the legitimacy of the signatures collected to get the initiative on the ballot may undermine the election results.”

Amendment 46 opponents tried to launch a similar suit in Colorado, but it failed. However, key players in the Vote No campaign are still in court challenging Secretary of State Mike Coffman, who ruled that their opposing, pro-affirmative action measure had too few sufficient signatures to make it onto the ballot.

As Colorado Independent’s election administration reporter, I wrote extensively in the past three weeks about people who never made it onto the voting rolls because of glitches with their registrations. Dan Aschenbrenner, whose name appeared on a Project Vote purge list, was one such person.

Dan had a peculiar story. A 48-year-old Denver native, he registered to vote for the first time in September when he was approached outside an Albertson’s grocery store. But because he accidentally neglected to check a little box on his registration form, his name never made it onto the voting rolls. When the Colorado Independent contacted Dan last week, he was unsurprised to learn of the problem, chalking it up to partisan shenanigans that had deterred him from wanting to vote in the first place.

However, Dan intended to vote anyway, and he agreed to let me come along with him to see if he could successfully cast a ballot. I wondered, in particular, if he would be handed a provisional form instead of a regular ballot, one that would be counted two weeks after Election Day. Since Dan was a “check box” voter, I figured that he would be able to fix his registration and vote a regular ballot at the poll, per a last-minute order by Denver County Clerk and Recorder Stephanie O’Malley.

Dan and I arrived at empty Godsman Elementary School in southwest Denver around 1 p.m. Tuesday. Dan checked in with the poll workers, one of whom ushered me to her director once I identified myself as a journalist. Barbara Stuart, the poll worker supervisor, told me that I was not allowed to speak with Dan or even follow him silently as he checked in. That amounted to electioneering, she insisted — the same charge applied to people who show up to the polls wearing Barack Obama or John McCain T-shirts — and it violated federal law. I told Barbara that I didn’t mean to be difficult, but as a nonpartisan journalist, I was not electioneering. And I had no intention of entering the polling booth with Dan.

Barbara, who was growing angry at this point, reiterated that I was not allowed to follow Dan, even though he had agreed to it. She also said I could speak only with certain election workers. And then she told me that I was being difficult, and that she had the right to call police.

When I asked Barbara to quote me the specific election law that precluded my presence, she couldn’t. Instead, she called her supervisor, who put in an information request to the city’s legal team. And then Barbara kicked me out of the polling site.

Several phone calls later, I finally figured out what happened to me. Barbara, it turns out, was wrong. Hanging with Dan in the polling place did not violate electioneering law. But Barbara did have the right to enforce a different election law, one to keep observers — including journalists — 6 feet away from voters. However, that law is meant to keep crowded polling places from jamming up.

“The 6-foot rule applies to all poll watchers and journalists,” says Denver Clerk and Recorder spokeswoman Tina Romero. “In very busy times, it’s a rule that assists judges in being able to orchestrate their duties.” Funny. The Godsman Elementary School was all but empty.

“It sounds like [Barbara] took her responsibilities very seriously, and maybe too seriously. She was too overzealous,” says Romero. “That happens at some of the locations.”

“It’s too bad that she couldn’t be more understanding.”

When Dan finished at the polling place, I chatted with him for a few minutes across the street. A man in a car covered with McCain-Palin stickers drove by and snapped a photo of me. Turns out that this voting rights activist saw my interaction with Barbara and wanted a photo of me.

Dan, by the way, also got the bum’s rush. He ended up voting with a provisional form when he should have been able to vote with a regular ballot. But you can read that story here.

According to The Denver Post, opponents of Amendment 46 have a slight, 1 percent lead. But provisional votes across the state are still being counted.

A similar measure, also propped by anti-affirmative action guru Ward Connerly, passed in Nebraska last night. Up until recently, the anti-46 contingent was mired in lawsuits attempting to railroad the initiative. But in the past few weeks, the Vote No campaign ramped up its advertising. Stay tuned for more as the results roll in.

First-time voter Dan Aschenbrenner proudly displays his 'I voted' sticker. (Photo/Naomi Zeveloff)

The story begins in September, when Aschenbrenner was approached by a voter registration-drive volunteer outside of a grocery store near his home. Aschenbrenner had never registered before — he had never before been asked to, he explains — but he signed up this time.

However, a technical mistake kept Aschenbrenner’s registration from making it onto the state’s rolls. It appears that he neglected to check a box on the form indicating that he would use his Social Security number instead of a state ID or driver’s license. Thousands of voters state-wide suffered from this so-called “check box” problem. But Denver County Clerk and Recorder Stephanie O’Malley promised a quick fix to the “check box” voters by allowing them to cure their registrations at the polls and vote by regular ballot on Election Day.

Aschenbrenner had an inkling that there were problems with his registration. He received a call from the local Democratic Party indicating as much. Project Vote, a non-partisan civic engagement organization in Washington, D.C., had also picked up on Aschenbrenner’s issue, including him on a list of canceled voters across the country, which is how the Colorado Independent found him.

Aschenbrennner says he wasn’t surprised to learn about the problem. “I thought, ‘It figures.’ I thought maybe I had waited too long. Or that the politics of the situation kept new people from getting on the rolls, like they’d be better off cutting anyone they couldn’t depend on.” (He had registered as an independent.)

When Aschenbrenner called Denver County on Monday, an election worker told him that he should have put his driver’s license number on the form instead of his Social Security number. However, Aschenbrenner said he didn’t check the box on the registration, and that may have been the fatal flaw.

On Tuesday morning, he decided to try his luck at the polls. He arrived at St. John’s Lutheran School in Denver’s Washington Park at 11 a.m. But, it turns out, the election worker was wrong about his polling place, and he was quickly rerouted to an elementary school on the other side of town.

Undeterred and unworried about missing work — he installs fire alarms for a living on his own schedule — Aschenbrenner arrived at Godsman Elementary School ready to vote. The poll worker couldn’t find his name in the poll book, which Aschenbrenner expected. But then something curious happened. Aschenbrenner was told to go to a different office and fix his registration, or else vote provisionally at the school.

“[The poll worker] said there is no difference between a provisional and a regular ballot,” Aschenbrenner says.

But as a “check box” voter, Aschenbrenner should have been able to fix his registration right then and there and vote a regular ballot.

“They should have taken care of it there at his regular polling place,” says Nancy Reubert, director of communications with the Denver County Clerk and Recorder’s office. “He should have been able to vote a regular ballot. Whether [the poll workers] were overwhelmed or confused, it sounds like they didn’t handle it the way procedures were given.”

Aschenbrenner isn’t the only one who may have mistakenly been given a provisional ballot. According to Jenny Flanagan, executive director of Colorado Common Cause, several polling places were very liberal with their administration of provisional ballots, which are verified in the two weeks after Election Day.

“Provisional ballots are the fail-safe ballot,” she says. “In some polling places, we have gotten reports that as soon as people are not found on the poll book, they are rushed over to a provisional ballot. This creates an extra step for the voter to be counted. If that person is eligible, we would much rather see them get a regular ballot.”

In El Paso County, State Sen. John Morse also expressed concerns about over-use of provisional ballots. “[They] are being given out at the first sign of a problem,” he says.

Yet even though Aschenbrenner may have been given a provisional form in error, he still felt satisfied. He said he didn’t see much difference in voting provisionally. And voting, he said, made him realize that he has a stake in policy. “I think it makes me aware that things are changing all the time, and that I am going to be subject to the results.”