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| 9/18/2008 6:00:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article | | The 2008 ballot questions |
•Amendment 46: Forbids the government from giving women and minorities special treatment in public employment, education or government contracts.
• Amendment 47: Bans mandatory union membership as a condition of employment.
• Amendment 48: Defines a fertilized human egg as a person, setting up a legal framework to ban abortion.
• Amendment 49: Forbids government and public school payrolls from being used to collect union dues.
• Amendment 50: Allows the towns of Black Hawk, Central City and Cripple Creek to raise their casino bet limits to $100.
• Amendment 51: Increases the state sales tax 0.2 percent to pay for services for the developmentally disabled.
• Amendment 52: Uses severance tax money to relieve traffic on Interstate 70; caps the severance tax fund for water projects.
• Amendment 53: Holds executives criminally liable for their companies' actions.
• Amendment 54: Forbids unions and some government contractors from making campaign contributions.
• Amendment 55: Forbids businesses from firing employees except for "just cause."
• Amendment 56: Requires businesses to provide health insurance for their employees.
• Amendment 57: Allows injured employees to sue for money in addition to their workers' compensation benefits.
• Amendment 58: Eliminates the property-tax deduction that gas and oil companies take on their severance tax bills.
• Amendment 59: Ends future tax rebates under the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights and uses the money for public schools; also repeals a constitutional amendment requiring higher school spending.
• Referendum L: Lowers the minimum age to serve in the Legislature to 21.
• Referendum M: Repeals an obsolete part of the constitution.
•Referendum N: Repeals an obsolete part of the constitution.
• Referendum O: Raises the number of signatures required to get initiatives on the ballot.
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Nation's longest ballot awaits Colorado voters this November
Joe Hanel
Journal Denver Bureau
DENVER - Colorado voters will face the longest ballot in a century this November.
The 18 questions on the ballot deal with some of the state's most hotly debated social and economic issues - from abortion and gambling to taxes on gas and oil companies and a partial repeal of the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights.
An electoral war between unions and their foes has made this the longest ballot since 1912 - the first year that citizen groups got access to the ballot - when there were 32 questions.
The union war accounts for seven of this year's questions. It began with a "Right to Work" initiative pushed by union opponents. The initiative would disallow rules that make union membership mandatory. Two other measures would forbid government unions from withholding dues from paychecks and prohibit political contributions from unions.
Unions responded with four ballot initiatives of their own, which would require business to pay for health insurance, make it harder to fire employees, make it easier for injured employees to sue their companies and hold executives criminally liable for troubles at their firms.
Gov. Bill Ritter tried to get the two sides to call a truce and withdraw their initiatives.
But he did not succeed, so Coloradans are left with the country's longest ballot this year.
"Nobody's going to come close to Colorado," said Jennie Drage Bowser, who tracks ballot initiatives for the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Together, the 18 questions total more than 18,000 words - almost as long as the Ernest Hemingway novella "The Old Man and the Sea." Only the official titles will appear on the ballot, but even those come to more than 2,300 words - more than five times as long as this newspaper article.
Rep. Ellen Roberts, of Durango, is hoping that voters will make it through to the very last question, which seeks - of all things - to make future ballots shorter.
Roberts is one of the lead proponents of Referendum O, which would raise the number of petition signatures needed to get something on the ballot.
Roberts' group has raised about $80,000 to promote Ref O - not enough to afford TV commercials, she said.
"In a year like this one, it's pretty hard to raise money for an initiative that isn't promoting the cause of special interest groups," Roberts said.
Other campaigns are raising much more. Energy companies fighting a severance tax hike have pooled $10 million, and Front Range casinos are spending $6 million to get permission to raise their betting limits.
In the coming weeks, the Cortez Journal will take a look at each one of the ballot questions.
Reach Joe Hanel at joeh@cortezjournal.com.
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