July 02, 2010 07:16 PM UTC

Should the SOS Change How It Validates Candidate Petitions?

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• by: Colorado Pols

Ernest Luning of the Colorado Statesman has a good story today about Democrat Jennifer Coken’s efforts to get her candidate petition signatures validated. While Coken’s situation is a story in itself, the bigger question is whether the Secretary of State should be changing its process in general:

Jennifer Coken’s name will stay on the Democratic primary ballot after the Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear an appeal that could have thrown out signatures on her nominating petitions. State officials had asked the high court to reverse a recent lower court decision that said 100 signatures submitted by Coken should count, which gave her just enough to qualify for the August election.

By refusing to hear the appeal from Colorado Secretary of State Bernie Buescher, the Supreme Court leaves open a contradiction between state law and Buescher’s rules when it comes to counting signatures when a voter signs petitions for more than one candidate seeking the same office, attorneys said…

…Because the district court order is at odds with the secretary of state office’s current rules, it could open the door to a tangle of lawsuits and delays, state officials argued. Buescher wanted a ruling from the Supreme Court to “stem the likely tide of future appeals,” his attorneys wrote in the appeal.

“As a practical matter, the Secretary cannot ignore the ruling of the District Court,” the document read. “He must apply the decision when future candidate petitions are submitted for review and verification. Lawsuits by persons who agree with the Secretary’s interpretation are likely to follow,” the appeal warned.

The main sticking point is a state law that says voters can’t sign more than one petition for the same office, a requirement [Denver District Court Judge Catherine] Lemon called “silly” and suggested lawmakers should reconsider. But under the secretary of state’s current rules, officials don’t try to determine which voters sign petitions correctly, just which candidates turn in their petitions first. In other words, the judge said the first petition signed by a voter is the one that’s signed according to the law and is the one that should count, but the secretary of state instead counts the first signature it sees and disallows any subsequent ones…

…Without a ruling from the Supreme Court, the secretary of state’s office plans to proceed according to its existing rules on duplicate signatures, a spokesman said. [Pols emphasis]

“We’ll continue to follow the process we have this year with the rest of the candidates,” secretary of state spokesman Richard Coolidge said.

Buescher’s office is in the process of reviewing petitions submitted by 24 unaffiliated candidates who are seeking spots on the ballot in November. Unlike Democratic and Republican candidates, whose only recourse on petition rulings is to take the secretary of state to court, unaffiliated candidates have a brief “cure” period after officials certify petitions and before county clerks are notified of the results.

To recap, the pertinent question here is to wonder why the SOS office is saying it’s going to continue verifying petitions in the same manner…even though a Denver District Court judge has ruled they are applying the law incorrectly when it comes to counting duplicate signatures.