I support the “Raise the Bar” Amendment 71 and here’s why. Imagine a well-funded special-interest group spending millions of dollars to amend the Colorado state Constitution to benefit an out-of-state corporation.
Ridiculous you say? Well, this is exactly what happened in 2014 when a Rhode Island gaming corporation spent millions trying to pass Amendment 68, which would have permitted casino gambling at horse racetracks in three Colorado counties. The Amendment would have benefited one out-of-state corporation, but hurt Colorado’s home-grown gaming industry.
The amendment failed, but the issue remains. Do we want our state Constitution to be easy to manipulate by deep-pocket, out-of-state special interest groups? Colorado’s Constitution is among the easiest state constitutions to amend. In 140 years of statehood, our state Constitution has been amended more than 150 times. That is because Colorado requires fewer signatures than any other state to get on the statewide ballot, the 98,492 threshold reflecting 5 percent of those who cast ballots for Colorado’s secretary of state.
Also, there is no requirement that petition signatures be gathered throughout the state. Currently the majority of petition signatures are gathered along the Front Range, particularly in the Denver and Boulder areas, leaving rural Coloradans, like many of us here in the Southwest part of the state, without a voice.
Then, once an initiative makes it to the statewide ballot, it requires only a simple majority to amend our state Constitution. Many other states require as much as a 60 percent popular majority to amend their constitutions.
Amendment 71 would require petition signatures to reflect 2 percent of the registered voters in each of the state’s 35 senate districts and would “raise the bar” required to amend the state Constitution by requiring a 55 percent popular vote to pass. These changes would protect Coloradans from special interest groups who use citizen’s initiatives to advance their cause.
Once cemented into our Constitution, these policies are difficult to update or remove because of the permanency enshrined in our state’s foundational document. I urge you to vote “yes” on Amendment 71.
Matt Stiasny
Dove Creek
