Labor interests have filed a lawsuit seeking to decertify the right-to-work measure, claiming proponents of the initiative committed “a pattern of massive fraud.”
Specifically, the suit claims signature collectors, or circulators, were out-of-state residents, falsely stated their addresses on the petitions and wrongly swore they understood circulation laws.
The suit, filed in Denver District Court, also challenges the validity of the notaries on the petitions and states that more than 53,500 signatures are from individuals who aren’t registered to vote.
The right-to-work group submitted more than 136,000 signatures last month, and the secretary of state’s office estimated that 94,546 were valid based on a random sampling. The measure needed 76,000 valid signatures to be certified for November’s ballot.
The initiative would ask voters to amend the state constitution to say that union membership and the payment of union dues or fees could not be mandatory.
The lawsuit seeks to vacate the sufficiency order by the secretary of state. It also wants the court to declare that the petition lacks the required signatures or require the state to perform a “line-by-line” analysis of the petition before it can be certified for the ballot.
Kelley Harp, a spokesman for the group pushing the right-to-work measure, has said the fraud allegation is a smoke screen.
“If any of the claims are true, what the lawsuit purports to show is clearly not up to par with the high standards of this campaign,” Harp said in a statement today. “The proper people will look into this and an appropriate judgment will be made.”
The 23-page suit was filed by a pair of individuals — a union member and a former union official — and names Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman, Aurora City Councilman Ryan Frazier and Julian Jay Cole as defendants. Frazier and Cole submitted the initial ballot proposal.
Andy Vuong: 303-954-1209 or avuong@denverpost.com
