Anti-war activists are hoping to place an issue on Colorado’s ballot next year that will draw Democrats to the polls and pull this battleground state further to the left. Or, since we’ve been pretty much to the right up until the past couple of elections, perhaps it’s more accurate to say closer to the center.
Ballotground, based in Washington, D.C., also is promoting ballot issues for Arizona, Michigan, Missouri and Oregon – four more of the 24 states that grant their citizens access to the ballot by petition.
But it’s unclear exactly what the ballot issue would be. A constitutional amendment? Swell. The state constitution already is loaded with extraneous ax-grinding. A statutory change? The problem with that is that it would allow the legislature to fiddle with it, and it’s hard to justify a state law dealing with international affairs.
The group doesn’t yet have a state coordinator, either. And it’s not good at returning phone calls.
Ballotground’s Dylan Loewe says in a fundraising letter that the idea borrows from a tactic used by the ideological right in recent elections. Anti-gay marriage and anti-abortion initiatives stirred the Republican base to vote, and Ballotground believes an anti-war resolution of some sort will motivate the left.
“Unprecedented in American history, our coordinated campaign will, quite literally, make the 2008 election a referendum on the Iraq War,” Loewe writes.
But he says it’s more than that. The ballot issues “can be a tool to increase anti-war turnout in battleground states, helping to ensure that the anti-war electorate chooses our next elected leaders.” In other words, it helps the Democrats.
A Pew Research Center poll taken after the 2006 election found that 68 percent of Democrats ranked Iraq as their biggest concern, compared with just 36 percent of Republicans. “Given this calculus,” Loewe says, “we have a unique opportunity to galvanize the anti-war base and ensure a heavily anti-war electorate in 2008.”
The five states also have the advantage of being comparatively unpredictable – the battleground advantage. All but Missouri have Democratic governors, and in 2004, all but Michigan and Oregon backed George W. Bush for president. Bush’s winning margin in Colorado was 4.7 percentage points, less than Missouri’s 7.2 points and Arizona’s 10.5.
So they can go either way, and all of them can be considered to be in play in 2008. Ballot issues might make a difference, although usually it’s the other way around. Colorado’s 1992 election illustrates how candidates make a difference for ballot issues. If maverick Ross Perot hadn’t been running that year, Colorado wouldn’t have had an 80 percent turnout, and anti-tax and anti-gay-rights measures might not have passed.
Dan Smith, a political science professor at the University of Florida, formerly at the University of Denver, said ideological initiatives like gay marriage and the minimum wage don’t appear to drive up overall turnout all that much. But they may attract a different group of voters. An anti-gay-marriage proposal on Ohio’s 2004 ballot could have increased the vote for Bush by 1 or 2 percentage points, he said.
But Smith remains skeptical. “As a strategy, I’m not really sure that [an anti-war initiative] is going to mobilize Democrats,” he said.
In all of the states targeted by Ballotground, it’s comparatively easy to get on the ballot, according to Jennie Bowser of the National Conference of State Legislatures. Colorado is the easiest.
And it isn’t as if the right is going to cede this tactic to the left – regardless of whether or not it works. Among the proposals for next year’s Colorado ballot are attacks on abortion, affirmative action, union closed shops and judges’ tenure.
Bowser, in fact, expects the largest number of ballot issues since the first-year record 32 in 1912. “It’ll be a fun year,” she said.
There may have been some sarcasm there.
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.
