For the first time since off-year TABOR elections started in 1993, there’s no statewide ballot issue in Colorado this November.
What a relief.
By this time two years ago, Coloradans were sick of the debate over Referendums C and D. Television was overrun with advertising for and against. Both sides warned of grim times ahead if they didn’t get their way: Higher taxes, the opponents hissed. No money for higher education, the proponents whined. There was deep and implacable division over what constitutes a tax increase.
That 2005 election was considerably more high-profile — and thus more annoying — than most off-year, fiscal-issue elections.
Only 11 statewide measures have been on the ballot in the six off-year elections since 1993. Just two of them passed.
Those figures come from Stan Elofson, who more or less retired from the Legislative Council a number of years ago. He put together some election statistics earlier this year with help from Daniel A. Smith, Jennifer Berg and Joey Lubinski.
They show, once again, that Colorado voters have an unusually high number of opportunities to consider ballot issues. Only 24 of the 50 states have similar petition access to the ballot, and only Oregon and California are more ballot-happy than Colorado.
There have been 362 statewide ballot proposals since the state’s initiative process took effect in 1912, which was 36 years after Colorado became a state. There were 32 issues on the ballot in 1912. Since then, the average has been seven ballot issues a year.
Most of the ballot issues, 58 percent, got there by citizen petition. But the legislature’s referred issues have a much better success ratio, almost 2-to-1 since 1970.
The 14 ballot issues in 2006 were the largest number in recent history. There were 13 statewide issues in 1992 and 12 each in 1972, 1996 and 2000.
Colorado voters also have constitutional power to put laws passed by the legislature to a vote of the people. The last time that happened was in 1932, when voters overturned, 217,671 to 134,313, a 5-cent increase in the state tax on margarine.
The only odd-year statewide election issues that have passed in 14 years were open-space acquisition in 2001 and Ref C in 2005. Among the losers were reinstatement of the state tourism tax in 1993, long-term contracts for private prisons in 1995, transportation projects in 1997, 1999 and 2001, all three issues proposed in 2003, and Ref’s C’s companion, D, in 2005.
This off-year, it’s comparatively calm and civil — even though voters haven’t escaped the inescapable John Hickenlooper. Jumpin’ John may have turned that Ref C election into a narrow victory with his merry skydiving leap from an airplane.
Now he’s back, with a supporting cast of nine puffy red letters — and even a frequent nemesis, City Auditor Dennis Gallagher, with his puffy red cheeks — to back Denver ballot issues A through I. The Denver mayor is all over the tube again, politicking, but at least he’s good-natured about it.
Most political advertising is anything but good-natured. It’s ominous, dark and attack-oriented. That was true of the early 2005 advertising, at least until it lightened up toward the end.
Statewide campaigns are usually better-funded than local campaigns, and money buys visibility. Visibility eventually becomes overexposure, and irritates voters.
Although the A-through-I campaign appears well-funded, it’s not as expensive as a statewide campaign, and it doesn’t have to contend with even a marginally funded opposition. Thus voters and TV viewers are not overly annoyed, and can focus on important things like the World Series.
Fred Brown (punditfwb@aol.com), retired Capitol Bureau chief for The Denver Post, is also a political analyst for 9News. His column appears twice a month.
