Washington Examiner
Colorado campaigners have secured enough signatures to get two initiatives that would place restrictions on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in the state on the November ballot.
The measures need 86,105 signatures by Aug. 4, and Coloradans for Safe and Clean Energy said it has well surpassed that mark. The effort, bankrolled in part by Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., has roiled Colorado politics, where sitting Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper and Democratic Sen. Mark Udall are both trying to win re-election.
Last weekend on “The Score” radio show, my colleague Scott Lee interviewed Paul Jacob, president of Citizens in Charge, a group dedicated to “…protecting and expanding the initiative and referendum process.” Paul made an impassioned case for initiative and referendum, but also noted that Virginia, the cradle on American political thought, lacks the process almost entirely. How could this possibly be? There’s no easy place to look for an answer. Virginia does hold regular statewide referendums on constitutional amendments, bond debt and the like. But all those matters come from the General Assembly and even then only after a very long and laborious process.
How difficult should it be for citizens to change their state constitution? They’ll be deciding that question in Colorado, where the state Senate is considering Concurrent Resolution 1, which would raise the threshold for constitutional referenda to 60 percent. The measure is supported by both political parties — it is co-sponsored by six of 15 GOP senators and 16 of 33 GOP representatives — but Paul Jacob, president of the Citizens in Charge Foundation, denounces it as an anti-democratic measure which “places the Colorado Constitution in the hands of a minority of voters.”
A ballot measure that would create a commission to study the existence of UFOs and extraterrestrials is gaining steam in Colorado.