February 03, 2026 11:19 AM UTC

After Signature Gatherers Misled Voters in Boulder, Backer of Pro-ICE Initiative Brags About Democratic Support

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• by: Keith Gelderloos

(Saying a mouthful — Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Originally posted at the Colorado Times Recorder

Last year, paid signature gatherers were found to be misleading voters in left-leaning areas of Colorado while canvassing for Initiative 95, a proposed constitutional amendment that would force local law enforcement to work more closely with ICE. Now, a leader of the conservative dark money group that created Initiative 95 is citing those deceptively gathered signatures as an indicator of support from the left.

“In order to get it on the ballot, we actually had to go to every single state Senate district across the state and get the required number of signatures,” said Kristi Burton Brown, state education board member and executive director of Advance Colorado. “That means people in Denver and Boulder were signing this, and conservative areas of the state.”

Brown, a state education board member and executive director of Advance Colorado, spoke about the recently approved initiative during a Jan. 26 appearance on KHOW’s Ryan Schuiling Live. Advance Colorado, the group behind Initiative 95, is a conservative political organization that does not disclose its donors and has backed more than 60 other right-wing initiatives for 2026.

As the initiative would require an amendment to the state constitution, it needed signatures from at least 2% of registered electors in each of Colorado’s 35 state Senate districts, in addition to receiving 5% (about 125,000) of the votes cast for the secretary of state in the previous election. This hurdle was reached at the end of December, and it was certified for the ballot on Jan. 23.

However, based on previous reporting by the Colorado Times Recorder, it has been discovered that signature gatherers in Boulder repeatedly framed the initiative as reining in ICE and “limiting deportation to violent criminals and felons only.”

“She said, ‘Would you like to help stop ICE from attacking … nonviolent criminals?’ 
And I said, ‘Absolutely I would,’” said Laura Kaplan, a Boulder resident who spoke with a circulator on Dec. 2, outside of a King Soopers on Table Mesa Drive in South Boulder. “So I took the clipboard, and I read it, and I said, ‘Well, hang on a second, this doesn’t actually stop ICE from doing anything,
all this does is make the local police call ICE on people who are charged with certain things.’”

As is stated in its official text, Initiative 95 would force local law enforcement to determine the immigration status of any person charged with a violent crime or who has a prior felony conviction, and to then notify the Department of Homeland Security if they are in the country illegally, or their status is unknown. Nowhere in the text would the initiative limit or restrain the actions of immigration agents.

CTR confirmed three other instances of signature gatherers representing the initiative in this manner and received several responses following the publication of our initial coverage from others who had had similar experiences with signature gatherers for Initiative 95 in Colorado.

Later in the radio appearance, Brown also claimed that coordination with federal immigration authorities was an area that “pretty much every single elected Democrat at the state and federal level here in Colorado agrees with.”

When CTR reached out to Brown via email to ask which lawmakers she was referring to, she pointed us to a video produced by Advance Colorado, seemingly showing Democrats from across the country speaking in favor of coordinating with ICE.

The first clip included in the video is of a July 30 interview with Attorney General Phil Weiser on PBS Newshour. While Advance’s video frames the quote as Weiser speaking in favor of local law enforcement collaboration with immigration officials, his appearance on the program was actually in defense of a lawsuit he had recently filed against a sheriff’s deputy who unlawfully shared arrest records with immigration authorities.

Brown’s statements came in the midst of a major funding battle over the Department of Homeland Security’s budget in Washington. Every Democratic representative from Colorado voted against the measure. U.S. Sens. John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet, both Democrats, also indicated they would not support it.