Elections, Electoral College, Mike Krause, National Popular Vote, Politics, Uncategorized

National Popular Vote repeal effort to appear on 2020 Colorado ballot

DENVER–The Secretary of State on Thursday announced that proponents of a repeal referendum of the recently passed National Popular Vote (NPV) legislation turned in a sufficient number of valid signatures and that the measure will appear on Colorado’s Nov. 5, 2020 general election ballot.

Mesa County Commissioner Rose Pugliese and Monument Mayor Don Wilson launched the repeal effort shortly after the Democrat-controlled Colorado legislature passed, and Governor Polis signed a bill that would add Colorado to a compact among states pledging all the member states’ Electoral College votes to the winner of an unofficial national popular vote for president. The compact goes in to effect if enough states to sign on to the pledge so that the Electoral votes add up to the 270 needed to elect a president.

Rose Pugliese & Don
Wilson w/signatures on August 1,  Complete Colorado file photo

Critics contend it would take away the decision of Colorado’s voters and put it in the hands of Californians and voters in large coastal cities instead.

The bill’s absence of a “safety clause,” which prevents a referendum asking voters to overturn legislation, opened the door to the repeal effort.

To put the repeal measure on the state-wide ballot required 124,632 valid signatures from registered Colorado voters, a number equal to 5 percent of the votes cast in the 2018 Secretary of State election. On August 1, Pugliese and Wilson turned in more than 227,161 signatures.  According to the proponents, over 100,000 of those signatures were gathered by volunteers.  “This is a historic grassroots movement, with the most signatures obtained by grassroots volunteers in Colorado’s history,” Pugliese told Complete Colorado at the time.

According to the Secretary of State, a 5 percent random sampling of signatures projected the number of valid signatures turned in at 183,673, well over the required number.

“This is an awesome victory for the thousands of Coloradans who volunteered their time to circulate petitions, and for the hundreds of thousands of Coloradans who signed the petition to veto Colorado’s participation in the National Popular Vote scheme,” said Wilson in a media release.

The question on the ballot will read, “Shall the following Act of the General Assembly be approved: An Act concerning adoption of an agreement among the states to elect the President of the United States by national popular vote, being Senate Bill No. 19-042?”

This means that it takes a “no” by 50 percent plus one of voters to repeal the NPV legislation.

“This is not a partisan thing,” Wilson previously told Complete Colorado. “This is about the independence of Colorado as a state in our union. We look forward to our voters having our say in what goes on in Colorado.”

The Secretary of State’s statement of signature sufficiency is available here.

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