(Photo/anthonygrimley, Flickr)

House Speaker Terrance Carroll, D-Denver, introduced legislation on Tuesday designed to address abuses that plagued the ballot initiative process in Colorado last election season.

Co-sponsored in the House by Lois Court, D-Denver, and in the Senate by Majority Leader Brandon Shaffer, D-Longmont, the bill aims narrowly to address the petitioning process, where signatures in support of initiatives are gathered, and particularly “concerns raised regarding the use of paid petition circulators,” according to a House Democratic Party press release.

Given the attention petition fraud garnered last year in Colorado, the speaker’s new bill would seem a natural for bipartisan support. And in a break with the partisan showdowns that have characterized this session so far, House and Senate Minority Leaders Mike May and Josh Penry have signed on as sponsors of the bill, as has Republican Rep. Amy Stephens of Monument.

“We must hold everyone to the highest standards when we are attempting to change our constitution or statutes,” Carroll said. “This bill will help to end the fraud and abuse we witnessed firsthand in 2008.”

The proposal language and petition signature threshold requirements for getting citizen-created statutory laws or constitutional amendments on Colorado’s ballot are some of the least constrained in the nation. It’s easy to meddle with state law, and that fact brings with it a host of problems caused by well-meaning but uninformed citizens as well as carpetbagging activists market-testing the viability of national causes.

Last year complaints were filed with the secretary of state concerning the petition process for at least four of the state’s ballot initiative proposals, which numbered well into the double digits. Fourteen initiatives made it onto the Colorado ballot, the longest ballot in the country.

In the run up to the election, for example, petition circulators paid by Colorado Springs-based Kennedy Enterprises to gather signatures for proposed Amendments 47, 53 and 59 allegedly told citizens it was legal to sign someone else’s name and that you didn’t have to be a registered voter to sign the petitions. Both suggestions are in clear violation of the state’s petition laws.

Protect Colorado’s Future, a pro-labor group, hired signature-getters who had only vague knowledge of the petitions, leading voters to commit fraud by encouraging them to sign their names multiple times.

Proposed Amendment 46, the “civil rights initiative” backed by California-based anti-affirmative action consultant Ward Connerly, also came under legal fire. The petition drive for the amendment was marked by accusations of misrepresentation as well as of signature fraud. Citizens said they were led to believe they were signing in support of a pro-affirmative action initiative. A “post-certification lawsuit” filed against the initiative in April 2008 challenged the validity of thousands of signatures, pointing out duplicate signatures, nonresident signatures, and signatures that failed to match names on the state voter lists.

As Carroll put it in Tuesday’s release: “Some paid petitioning is ripe for abuse.”

Although the bill seems likely to gain support among lawmakers, pressure from outside the Capitol may mount against it.

Last year’s Referendum O, which would have tightened the ballot initiative process, was defeated at the polls and attacked by infamous direct democracy proponents, like former Republican state Rep. Doug Bruce, the author of the Colorado Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights, which passed as a constitutional amendment in 1992.

That was the era when Colorado — long known as a “cradle state” of direct democracy — began to draw interest groups looking to field-test controversial laws at the ballot box.

In fact the state’s loose initiative rules extend well beyond signature fraud and mark every stage of the process, from drafting requirements and legislative review to title setting and the increasingly expensive and often anonymously funded campaigns produced to persuade voters to vote for or against ballot proposals. The legal wrangling that now almost inevitably trails initiatives at every stage of the process has spurred analysts as well as lawmakers to consider remedies.

A 2002 task force composed of the National Conference of State Legislators recommended initiative states like Colorado firm up the processes substantially and non-initiative states avoid adopting the ballot initiative altogether.

Carroll’s bill will likely be seen as a mere band-aid by critics of the initiative process and as an ominous opening salvo by proponents, a first shot in a wider effort to wrest power from the citizens.

The election of the nation’s first African-American president overshadowed another step forward in the struggle for equality — the defeat of Amendment 46, which would have rolled back decades of civil rights law.

In an exclusive interview with affirmative-action foe Ward Connerly, The Colorado Independent examines the ballot measure’s loss and the crumbling of the conservative movement’s aim to dismantle civil rights protections state-by-state.

“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.”

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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.”

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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.”

Read the complete story: After Colorado loss, Ward Connerly may pull the plug on affirmative-action bans.

(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.

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.

University of Colorado coach Jeff Bzdelik, Colorado State University coach Tim Miles and University of Northern Colorado coach Tad Boyle decried the measure, which will banish public affirmative action programs across the state.

“Rather than eliminate opportunities for minority students attacked by this initiative, we should figure out strategies to improve college opportunities for all low-income kids,” said Bzdelik in a press release. “We don’t want to see our university weakened by Amendment 46. Diversity makes CU strong — we need more of it, not less.”

Amendment 46 and a similar measure in Nebraska are being promoted by Ward Connerly, a California businessman who wants to dismantle affirmative action nationwide. The initiative has also been denounced by the National Association of Basketball Coaches, the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association and the Black Coaches and Administrators.

Hickenlooper will speak on the front steps of the City and County Building in Denver.

Late last month, Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter also slammed the measure during a press conference, calling it a “California import.” The initiative has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from Ward Connerly, a California businessman who is attempting to ban affirmative action state by state.

While similar projects in other states failed this year, both Colorado and Nebraska electors will vote on whether they’d like to cut preferential treatment programs for women and minorities.