President (To Win Colorado) See Full Big Line

(D) Kamala Harris

(R) Donald Trump

80%↑

20%

CO-01 (Denver) See Full Big Line

(D) Diana DeGette*

(R) V. Archuleta

98%

2%

CO-02 (Boulder-ish) See Full Big Line

(D) Joe Neguse*

(R) Marshall Dawson

95%

5%

CO-03 (West & Southern CO) See Full Big Line

(R) Jeff Hurd

(D) Adam Frisch

50%

50%

CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado) See Full Big Line

(R) Lauren Boebert

(D) Trisha Calvarese

90%

10%

CO-05 (Colorado Springs) See Full Big Line

(R) Jeff Crank

(D) River Gassen

80%

20%

CO-06 (Aurora) See Full Big Line

(D) Jason Crow*

(R) John Fabbricatore

90%

10%

CO-07 (Jefferson County) See Full Big Line

(D) B. Pettersen

(R) Sergei Matveyuk

90%

10%

CO-08 (Northern Colo.) See Full Big Line

(D) Yadira Caraveo

(R) Gabe Evans

52%↑

48%↓

State Senate Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

80%

20%

State House Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

95%

5%

Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Post Type Selectors
September 06, 2019 10:09 AM UTC

(NOT) BREAKING: Polis Recall Petition Drive Ends In Failure

  • 32 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE #4: Progress Now Colorado tries to take the edge off the bad news for President Donald Trump’s next briefing:

—–

UPDATE #3: Gov. Jared Polis’ full statement:

“After all that fuss, I was pleasantly surprised that they didn’t turn in a single signature on the recall. I hope the remaining misguided efforts against others see the same results as Tom Sullivan’s did before. Recalls should not be used for partisan gamesmanship.

“Yesterday I was in Rifle, last week I was in Ignacio, Cortez, and Durango, and next week I’ll be in Trinidad and Lamar. Across the state, people are so excited that kids everywhere are able to attend kindergarten free of charge, and that for the first time in history, health insurance rates are going down more than 18% next year. Mom and pop stores across the state are already benefiting from our tax cut that reduced taxes for 144,000 small and medium-sized businesses across our state.

“Now that this sideshow is over, I will continue to focus my full attention on building upon our bipartisan success with kindergarten and saving money on health care. For my nine months in office I’ve held regular meetings with Republican and Democratic legislative leadership, and after the remaining recall efforts fail I plan on inviting both sides to a joint bipartisan leadership meeting to discuss how together we can improve our schools, reduce our traffic, and save people even more money on health care. Let’s see what amazing things we can do for Colorado, together.”

—–

That’s not very many boxes.

UPDATE #2: Colorado Sun:

Friday was the end of a 60-day period during which supporters of the recall needed to collect 631,266 valid signatures — or more than 10,521 a day — to make the special election happen. No campaign has ever collected that many signatures in Colorado.

Organizers said they collected more than 300,000 signatures…

Organizers also said they will not turn in the signatures that they did collect. If they did, the people who signed would have been prohibited from signing any other petition to recall Polis during his term in office. The maneuver also prevents the public from knowing who signed the petition.

We feel this is crucial to reiterate. No news story should quote the campaign’s 300,000 signatures claim without noting that this number has not been and at this point will not ever be verified, since the petitions will not be turned into the Secretary of State for verification.

For all we know, those forms could be blank.

—–

UPDATE: Marshall Zelinger of 9NEWS reports that the “Resist Polis” campaign collected roughly 300,000 signatures, less than half the required number and nowhere close to the necessary margin for account for the inevitable invalid signatures. They will not be turning collected signatures in, meaning even these pitiful numbers cannot be verified–but based on the typical validity rate for ballot measure petitions, the number of valid signatures is almost certainly far below the announced total..

In short, the campaign to recall Gov. Jared Polis has now been confirmed to be a massive waste of time and energy that in hindsight received much more attention than it ever deserved. Updates, reactions to follow.

—–

That’s the word from a press conference underway now at the “Resist Polis” campaign, whose 60-day window to collect over 630,000 valid Colorado voter signatures ends today.

We’re updating as word comes in, so watch this space.

Tweet
Share

Comments

32 thoughts on “(NOT) BREAKING: Polis Recall Petition Drive Ends In Failure”

  1. I'll be interested to see how much money and effort was wasted on something for which no reasonable person would have given a chance of success. Who got paid, who dropped real donations?

  2. In the comment section of the live Facebook feed someone stated if they don’t submit the signatures that a second attempt would require twice as many? Is that the way Recall 2.0 works? 

    Rock, meet hard spot?

    1. I don't think that's an issue, no. If they had turned in the signatures, then a future effort would not have been able to use the same people's signatures. That would have been a nightmare – if they thought they had any chance in the first place. But this was about activism and name-gathering, not about any realistic shot at recalling Polis.

      1. I don't know what exactly the commenter I quoted was getting at, but now that they completed an official petition process (and obviously failed), do future Polis-specific recalls have a higher bar, or does the signature requirement stay the same no matter how many times they try (and fail)? 

  3. So they probably collected what, 100k valid signatures? I think they should be required to turn those in so the SoS can check to see if they were following the freaking law or not. 

    1. The committee winds up with a big L on their effort.  Details would be interesting to a few of us, but probably not worth using Secretary of State's personnel to process the forms.

      The required filings for donations and expenditures, however, ought to be a matter of publicity.  I'd like the donors to get on a few more lists for scammers to use.  I'd like to know which businesses to avoid.  And tracking the money to its destinations in other committees and how those committees choose to spend can help tie the whole enterprise to the Trumpyest elements of the GOP.

      1. No! They had a sign posted on US 285 which said "Polis recall petitions – US citizens only."

        (But no mention of “Colorado Registered Voters Only”.)

      2. From this morning’s live thread on the Recall Jared Polis FB page (there are a lot of entertaining comments; not sure who is the ‘they’ being referenced.)

                1. …and then, like Donnie’s infamous two minutes with Stormy, the nice lady in the blue dress broke spun the news and it was over (except for the finger-pointing, payoffs and lawsuits)

            2. A photo on another site showed 40 tubs, x 8o signatures per packet, now all we need to know is how many packets per tub and I'd bet my mortgage payment those packets weren't all full. Sorry, math was never my best subject, but there are too many unknown quantities to solve this problem

    1. I’m doing some calling for the anti-Pettersen recall. Of the few people I’ve reached, none was aware of the recall effort, and none had been asked to sign a recall petition. The recall organizer, Nancy (not Pelosi) Pallozzi, is running for Lakewood City Council in Ward 5. So she’s probably busy with that.

      My understanding is that Our Colorado Way of Life is shifting resources to Pueblo to help with the not-recall of Senator Leroy Garcia. I don’t know how the effort to not-recall Pete Lee of the Springs is going. 

    2. Based on a couple of FB threads I observed last night someone in eastern Colorado recall leadership didn't do a very good job of splainin' the rules to the masses.  One lady demanding a recount; another insisted all they had to do was submit 651,000 signatures in total. Concerns about all of the 10's of thousands of signatures gathered that didn't get sent in (can they still be counted?). A few F-bombs. Some interesting spelling-twists on how some of the nice Christian folk (based on their FB profile) describe our Governor.

      Lots of promises this wasn't over – although the handful of those proclamations were coming from El Paso County residents.  Don't they have something better to do, like getting Gordon elected into his next government job? 

  8. I sort of liked the one comment from "Sherronna Bishop", asking the Governor if he could "hear us now"?

    No, because he was rolling around on the floor laughing out loud.

     

    2. I have to give the Gov credit…he actually went on a Facebook thread and attempted to respond to any of these yahoos that had real comments, questions, concerns. He didn’t respond to the name callers, the slogan shouters, or the meme posters. This was a few days ago.

      (I’d love to see Cory Gardner, Ken Buck, really any Republican politician, take the heat on an open social media thread like that. But they’d never do it….cause they’re not as brave as the gay guy from Boulder.)

      Jared Polis has  also been in many face to face meetings all over the state….so yes, My Sherrona, as long as you can actually articulate a reality-based grievance, the Governor can hear you now. 

Leave a Comment

Recent Comments


Posts about

Donald Trump
SEE MORE

Posts about

Rep. Lauren Boebert
SEE MORE

Posts about

Rep. Yadira Caraveo
SEE MORE

Posts about

Colorado House
SEE MORE

Posts about

Colorado Senate
SEE MORE

162 readers online now

Newsletter

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay in the loop with regular updates!