Supporters of making it more difficult to amend Colorado's constitution submit signatures to Secretary of State

DENVER, August 5, 2016 -- The backers of a proposal that would make it harder to amend Colorado's constitution turned in petition signatures Friday to the Secretary of State in an effort to put the measure before voters in November.

Initiative No. 96 requires that any petition for a citizen-initiated constitutional amendment be signed by at least 2 percent of the registered electors in each of the 35 state Senate districts. The percentage of votes to pass any proposed constitutional amendment would be increased from a majority to at least 55 percent of the votes cast, unless the proposed amendment only repeals any provision of the constitution.

The office will now conduct a 5-percent random sample of submitted signatures to determine whether the proposal meets the threshold to make the ballot. To get on the ballot, proponents need to submit 98,492 valid voter signatures -- 5 percent of the total votes cast for all candidates for Colorado Secretary of State in the last general election.

Signatures are still being collected for five other proposed ballot measures. The deadline to turn them in is 3 p.m. Monday Aug. 8, and the Secretary of State's Office has 30 days after signatures are submitted to announce whether a proposal made the ballot.

The only citizen-initiative already confirmed on the ballot is Amendment 69. Backers were informed last November they had collected enough valid signatures to put what is known as "ColoradoCare" before the voters.

On Thursday, supporters of a measure to allow terminally ill Coloradans to obtain a prescription to bring about their deaths turned in their petition signatures. And last month, the office received petition signatures for a measure that would boost Colorado's minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2020.

Here's a look at other measures that are currently circulating and could be on the November ballot:

Proposed constitutional amendments

• Local government authority to regulate oil-and-gas development: No. 75
• Mandatory setback for oil/gas development: No. 78
• New cigarette and tobacco taxes: No. 143

Proposed propositions

• Primary elections: No. 98
• Presidential primary election: No. 140

Also on the ballot will be two measures referred by the Colorado General Assembly: Amendment T, regarding servitude, and Amendment U, regarding property taxes.