Colorado § 1-40-101 - Legislative declaration.

§ 1-40-101. Legislative declaration.

(1) The general assembly declares that it is not the intention of this article to limit or abridge in any manner the powers reserved to the people in the initiative and referendum, but rather to properly safeguard, protect, and preserve inviolate for them these modern instrumentalities of democratic government.

(2) (a) The general assembly finds, determines, and declares that:

(I) The initiative process relies upon the truthfulness of circulators who obtain the petition signatures to qualify a ballot issue for the statewide ballot and that during the 2008 general election, the honesty of many petition circulators was at issue because of practices that included: Using third parties to circulate petition sections, even though the third parties did not sign the circulator's affidavit, were not of legal age to act as circulators, and were paid in cash to conceal their identities; providing false names or residential addresses in the circulator's affidavits, a practice that permits circulators to evade detection by persons challenging the secretary of state's sufficiency determination; circulating petition sections without even a rudimentary understanding of the legal requirements relating to petition circulation; and obtaining the signatures of persons who purported to notarize circulator affidavits, even though such persons were not legally authorized to act as notaries or administer the required oath;

(II) The per signature compensation system used by many petition entities provides an incentive for circulators to collect as many signatures as possible, without regard for whether all petition signers are registered electors; and

(III) Many petition circulator affidavits are thus executed without regard for specific requirements of law that are designed to assist in the prevention of fraud, abuse, and mistake in the initiative process.

(b) The general assembly further finds, determines, and declares that:

(I) Because petition circulators who reside in other states typically leave Colorado immediately after petitions are submitted to the secretary of state for verification, a full and fair examination of fraud related to petition circulation is frustrated, and as a result, the secretary of state has been forced to give effect to certain circulator affidavits that were not properly verified and thus were not prima facie evidence of the validity of petition signatures on affected petition sections; and

(II) The courts have not had authority to exercise jurisdiction over fraudulent acts by circulators and notaries public in connection with petition signatures reviewed as part of the secretary of state's random sample.

(c) Therefore, the general assembly finds, determines, and declares that:

(I) As a result of the problems identified in paragraphs (a) and (b) of this subsection (2), one or more ballot measures appeared on the statewide ballot at the 2008 general election even though significant numbers of the underlying petition signatures were obtained in direct violation of Colorado law and the accuracy of the secretary of state's determination of sufficiency could not be fully evaluated by the district court; and

(II) For the initiative process to operate as an honest expression of the voters' reserved legislative power, it is essential that circulators truthfully verify all elements of their circulator affidavits and make themselves available to participate in challenges to the secretary of state's determination of petition sufficiency.

Source: L. 93: Entire article amended with relocations, p. 676, § 1, effective May 4. L. 2009: Entire section amended, (HB 09-1326), ch. 258, p. 1169, § 2, effective May 15.

Editor's note: This section is similar to former § 1-40-111 as it existed prior to 1993, and the former § 1-40-101 was relocated. For a detailed comparison, see the comparative tables located in the back of the index.

ANNOTATION

Annotator's note. The following annotations include cases decided under former provisions similar to this section.

This statute is constitutional. Zaner v. City of Brighton, 899 P.2d 263 (Colo. App. 1994).

The legislative intent of article 40 primarily is to make the initiative process fair and impartial. In re Ballot Title 1999-2000 Nos. 245(f) and 245(g), 1 P.3d 739 (Colo. 2000).

Legislation may not restrict right to vote. Legislative acts which prescribe the procedure to be used in voting on initiatives may not restrict the free exercise of the right to vote. City of Glendale v. Buchanan, 195 Colo. 267, 578 P.2d 221 (1978).