Suit filed over Amendment 46

Rocky Mountain News
April 24, 2008
David Montero

A group analyzing thousands of signatures that qualified a November ballot measure backed by Ward Connerly filed a legal challenge claiming more than half are invalid.
Craig Hughes, spokesman for No on 46 campaign committee, said they used a broad screening to allow signatures to count based on misspellings or names that sound the same and still found about 69,000 signatures that they claim are not valid.
"We've taken an exhaustive review of all of the signatures Connerly submitted and we found it replete with mistakes, errors and ignoring the law," Hughes said.
The ballot measure, Amendment 46, was the first to qualify for the November ballot when the Colorado secretary of state certified it March 24 using a random sampling of signatures and declaring enough were valid to meet the legal threshold of 76,047 to qualify.
However, with the legal challenge that will be heard in Denver District Court, if the anti-Amendment 46 group can prove its claim that 69,000 are ineligible, it would be taken off the November ballot.
Hughes said the problems with the signatures include more than 4,000 duplicate signatures and almost 7,000 signatures were affected because signature gatherers were not Colorado residents — a legal requirement in the state to collect signatures.
Amendment 46 has been under fire ever since Connerly arrived in Colorado last year to begin the signature gathering process. Connerly said the measure mirrors the language of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and would end discrimination in government.
But opponents argue it doesn't follow the spirit of the law and that it would dismantle affirmative action programs.
A separate challenge has also been filed against the amendment's backers, claiming Connerly's signature gatherers engaged in misleading practices to collect signatures. [To read the entire story, go to: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/apr/24/suit-filed-over-amendment-46/]