DENVER—Opponents of an anti-affirmative action proposal have filed a lawsuit to yank the measure from the ballot, alleging that about 56,000 signatures on the ballot petition don’t match names on Colorado’s voter registration list.
The lawsuit, filed late Wednesday in Denver District Court, contends that 4,539 other signatures appeared more than once and that 1,799 were collected by people who weren’t Colorado residents, in violation of state law. In all, the suit challenges the validity of 68,948 names.
Backers of the Amendment 46 proposal collected about 129,000 signatures—50,000 more than the minimum required. It’s the only measure the secretary of state’s office has cleared so far for the ballot.
“I think they thought that the number would scare off any challenge,” Craig Hughes, a spokesman for the Vote No on 46 campaign, said Thursday.
Jessica Corry, a spokeswoman for the Amendment 46 campaign, said campaigns usually collect more than the required minimum because signatures typically are thrown out for various reasons, such as people forgetting to change their voter registration address when they move.
She said the campaign used a national company to collect signatures but that all petition gatherers were Colorado residents.
The secretary’s office checked a sample of 6,403 signatures—5 percent of the total—and rejected about a third, or 2,084, spokesman Rich Coolidge said.
Based on that sample, the office assumed that 86,366 signatures were valid, about 10,000 more than the minimum required.
Hughes said opponents scanned all petition signatures and used a computer program to check them against voter rolls.
He said they used a broad screening process that didn’t disqualify names that were a few letters off, or ones that sounded the same but were spelled differently on the petition and on voter lists, such as “Reilly” and “Riley”.
Members of another group opposed to the measure, Colorado Unity, say dozens of people have complained that signature gatherers misled them, for example, by saying that the measure supported affirmative action and would stop a nonexistent federal anti-discrimination law from expiring.
However, only three formal complaints were filed with the state, and one of those was thrown out because the person wasn’t a registered voter. An administrative law judge will consider the two other complaints in July.
No date had been set for a hearing in the lawsuit. Amendment 46 supporters and Secretary of State Mike Coffman have 20 days to respond.
On Wednesday, after being told by a reporter that a new bill would outlaw out-of-state petition gatherers, Amendment 46 backer Ward Connerly told The Associated Press that about half the signature gatherers were from Colorado and half were out-of-state.
In fact, existing law mandates that gatherers be Colorado residents. House Bill 1406 would require that companies affirm that a Colorado resident is running any petition drive and that only Colorado residents have been hired to collect signatures.
Under the bill, organizers would also have to affirm that they told petition gatherers not to lie or mislead voters. Violators could be charged with a misdemeanor.
Connerly, a California businessman who has backed similar measures in other states, said Thursday he misspoke about what happened in Colorado because he was told that the law was being changed. In states where out-of-state residents can be hired, campaign drives usually rely on a crew of about half residents and half from out-of-state, he said.
Connerly declined to discuss the allegations raised in the lawsuit but said he’s confident the petition signatures will be upheld.
“These people don’t know when to give up. We will let the process adjudicate this,” Connerly said.
