This story was produced as part of the Colorado Capitol News Alliance. It first appeared at coloradosun.com.
Colorado loves its ballot questions, ranking among the top states for the most on the ballot. But voters also like to say no — a lot.
In the over 100 years that Colorado voters have been able to petition to put questions on the state’s ballot, only 36% of the 256 questions that made it on the ballot have passed, according to a tally by the state legislature. Questions referred to the ballot by state lawmakers have done better, passing nearly 60% of the time.
Between 1960 and 2024, Colorado had the third highest number of voter-initiated ballot measures, behind California and Oregon, according to John Matsusaka, professor of finance and business economics at the University of Southern California and the executive director of the school’s Initiative and Referendum Institute. Colorado’s 14 statewide ballot questions in 2024, half citizen-initiated and half from the legislature, were the most in any state that year, Matsusaka found.
But a process that Colorado adopted over a generation ago as a way for voters to challenge powerful interests and lawmakers’ prerogatives has increasingly become a tool for those same interests.
Getting a question before voters can cost millions of dollars, much of it spent paying signature gatherers. That has made deep-pocketed businesses, political groups and the rich even more influential in determining which ideas reach the ballot.
Former Colorado Senate President Steve Fenberg believes the process has become one almost exclusively for well-financed groups in the decade since signatures have had to be collected across the state to get measures on the ballot.
It can cost between $1 million and $3 million to pay people to collect enough signatures, Fenberg said. But that’s not a high bar for some groups to meet.
“We are considered one of the easiest states in the country to get on the ballot. You basically just write a check,” Fenberg said.
Ballot measures have always posed a quicker way for interest groups with money to influence what laws get passed, rather than lobbying for bills at the legislature, said Seth Masket, a political science professor at the University of Denver who has studied ballot measures in California. California has had even more ballot questions than Colorado. California adopted the initiative process around the same time as Colorado and about a decade later, oil companies were trying to get measures passed on the ballot, he said.
This year, Colorado voters could be asked to decide on about 15 ballot questions in November’s election, depending on how many voter-backed initiatives gathered enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. A number of them are going through a signature-checking process with the Secretary of State’s Office, which will be completed by Sept. 2.
Voters overwhelmingly backed initiatives in 1910
Colorado voters have been busy deciding these issues since they were first allowed in 1912.
State lawmakers put the issue on the 1910 ballot asking voters whether to allow ordinary people to propose ballot questions. It was a reform aimed at checking the power of big business and urban political machines during the Progressive Era in response to the growth of cities and widening economic inequality.
Colorado voters overwhelmingly approved the idea, with 77% electing to allow voter-initiated measures.
Taxation, funding for education and roads and how to conduct elections have been frequent topics voters have put to voters over the years, said Gerry Cummins, a past president of the Colorado League of Women Voters who analyzed ballot measures for the organization’s voting guide.
In 1992, Colorado voters approved the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, a petition-driven measure, which among other things, requires any tax increases to be approved by voters.
The same year that TABOR passed, 53% of Colorado voters also approved a voter-initiated ballot question barring state and local laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation, earning Colorado the nickname the “hate state” and triggering boycotts. Four years later, the U.S. Supreme Court declared Amendment 2 unconstitutional.
In 1972, voters rejected spending tax dollars to help Denver host the 1976 Winter Olympics. The late Gov. Dick Lamm, then a state lawmaker, led the petition drive against the Olympics, saying it would hurt the state’s budget and environment.
Special interests turning to ballot measures
But what started as a way to push back against special interests has become an expensive process that has been increasingly used by them to advance their agenda.
Fenberg thinks that’s been especially the case since 2016, when voters overwhelmingly agreed to make it harder to change the state constitution by requiring backers of constitutional ballot changes to collect signatures of at least 2% of registered electors in each of Colorado’s 35 state senate districts. At the time, opponents warned it would make it harder for grassroots groups to push for constitutional changes — a prediction Fenberg said has come true.
Progressive nonprofits that don’t have to disclose their donors have also been important players in ballot measure campaigns. In the 2020 election, the Sixteen Thirty Fund and North Fund donated most of the $9 million spent to pass paid family sick and medical leave.
In 2024, more than $42 million was spent on ballot measures. The largest share, about $14.5 million, went to a failed proposal that sought to change Colorado’s primaries so candidates from all parties could run against each other. It was backed by Kent Thiry, the wealthy former CEO of the Denver-based dialysis giant DaVita.
This year, expect more campaign spending from business groups like the Colorado Contractors Association, which is backing a constitutional amendment to increase state spending on roads.
Changes to the constitution are harder to get on the ballot and also require another constitutional amendment to undo them or modify them later if times change and the ideas are no longer popular.
Right to natural gas, cooperating with ICE
Three of the seven ballot initiatives that have earned a spot on the ballot so far are linked to Advance Colorado, a conservative advocacy group that doesn’t disclose its donors. They include a proposal that would enshrine the right to use natural gas for cooking and heating in the state’s constitution and strengthen penalties for crimes involving fentanyl. Another would require law enforcement to let federal immigration authorities know if someone charged with a crime is in the country illegally.
Advance Colorado declined to comment.
Democratic political strategist Val Nosler Beck thinks conservative interests have done a better job lately of petitioning to get their issues on the ballot as their political power has waned at the state Capitol, where Democrats are hoping to become a supermajority. That includes trying out different versions of proposals on the same issue to ensure that at least one is approved by the state board that approves the language of each ballot initiative.
“They are best positioned to be successful on the ballot,” she said.
The heavy involvement of Advance Colorado in this year’s ballot initiative process shows the need for changes in campaign finance laws, said Andrew Barton, program manager for Colorado Common Cause, a nonprofit aligned with progressives that advocates for open government. Voters should know not only the arguments for and against measure, but also who is paying to pass them, he said.
“Clearly something that the overwhelming number of voters care about is knowing where the money is in our political system, both for candidates and with ballot measures,” Barton said.
A 2022 state law sponsored by Fenberg and passed with bipartisan support requires groups that spend over $5,000 on a measure to disclose subsequent spending as long as that spending is a certain percentage of their overall spending. But it only provides limited information about who made the contributions, not about how that money was raised.
For example, Colorado Dawn, a Colorado Springs conservative political nonprofit that has supported Republican candidates and causes in the past, spent $750,000 to collect signatures to get the natural gas proposal on the ballot. In a campaign finance filing, the committee describes itself as supporting candidates and policies that “strengthen our economy, society and education system.” A message left at a telephone number listed for the committee was not immediately returned.
Another group, based in the Washington, D.C.-area, A Common Sense America, reported spending $625,000 this year to help collect signatures for the natural gas proposal. It did not return a telephone call or email seeking comment on why it is supporting the measure.
