June 15, 2010 11:41 PM UTC

Battle Brewing over Ballot Issue Petitons

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• by: Dan Willis

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

Recently the Independence Institute brought a challenge to court over a perceived conflict in law, but it was only one part of a larger suit and was not addressed by the court when the court ruled on another issue making the rest of the suit moot.

The unresolved issue is what is the deadline to file a petition to put a ballot question on the ballot?

The State Constitution reads that such petitions are due “at least 3 months” prior to the general election. In 2010, that 3 months prior date falls on Aug. 2nd.

In 2009, the legislature passed a bill to change the due date to “3 months and 3 weeks” prior to the general election. In 2010, that date falls on July 12th.

In a plain reading of the State Constitution, but using the phrase “at least 3 months” would suggest to me (and apparently the General Assembly) that the due date could be set prior to that 3 month point. And, they did just that by adding 3 weeks to the time prior to the election.

The reasoning behind such a change was to allow a period for any protests of the petitions to take place without delaying the process of preparing for the election. This had been an issue in 2006 and 2008.

However, the Secretary of State’s office is currently of the opinion that the Constitution means 3 months and the date is not changeable without a constitutional amendment. They are prepared to accept petitions up to Aug. 2nd.

Any petition that is submitted between July 12th and Aug 2nd, would then be open to attack by opposing forces on the ground they are in violation of the recently passed statute. This could get very sticky and I will be very interested in the outcome of the inevitable lawsuit against the SoS.