Going forward, it will be more difficult to get constitutional amendments on the ballot in Colorado.
Amendment 71 requires that all ballot initiatives receive a 55 percent approval by voters, but to make it onto the ballot to begin with, all proposed constitutional amendments will first be required to garner signatures of two percent of voters in each of Colorado’s 35 senate districts.
Prior to passage of the amendment, anyone able to raise enough money and signatures could propose amendments to Colorado’s constitution, sidestepping the legislative process, the Denver Post reports; petitioners had to gather signatures equal to five percent of the votes cast in the most recent secretary of state election to have an initiative added to the ballot.
Amendment 71, also known as “Raise the Bar” was backed heavily by the oil and gas industry in response to an unsuccessful campaign to ban fracking, according to the Denver Post.
Opponents of the amendment say the ability to propose ballot initiatives helped circumvent legislative gridlock, while supporters say the state constitution should not be so easy to change and argue that the many ballot initiatives proposed in the past, have not been citizen-led but are often funded, at least in part, by national groups.
The bottom line is, changing existing amendments, both good and bad, to Colorado’s constitution will now be much more difficult.
The LA Times reported prior to the Nov. 8 election that passage of Amendment 71 would change Colorado’s reputation for being a national laboratory for big ideas, having been the first state to grant women the right to vote and more recently, legalizing marijuana.
