October 06, 2020 10:43 AM UTC

Recall Polis 2020 Claims Over 200,000 Signatures Already

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• by: Colorado Pols

They’re the ones saying so, we’re just the messenger:

If the graphic you see above is truthful, the Recall Polis 2020 campaign would have now have in its possession somewhere in excess of 200,000 signatures, on their way to the minimum necessary 631,266 minimum number necessary by the deadline of November 13th to qualify a recall question against Gov. Jared Polis for the ballot. Just like last year, collecting that historic number of signatures would still fall well short of the 30% or more in excess needed to cover the expected percentage of invalid signatures that arise in the verification process–but presumably 631,000 is the campaign’s initial target.

The problem, of course, is that we have absolutely no way of knowing whether this claim has a basis in reality–and plenty of reasons to suspect it does not. The first thing the current recall campaign would logically try to do, assuming they’re in possession of the data, is reach out to the of signers of the 2019 Polis recall petition. That effort claimed to have collected more than 300,000 signatures after the full 60-day campaign, but the true number will never be known since they were never turned in for verification by the Secretary of State.

The thing is, an outreach campaign to those signers just by itself would be a huge logistical undertaking that there’s been no sign of actually taking place. We’re more than three weeks into this recall petition campaign, and it’s true that the campaign needs to be at well over 200,000 signatures collected to be on track for success by the deadline–but apart from this graphic that claims all is well, there’s very little sign of the field campaign that would actually be required to produce those numbers. And even if in the most charitable benefit of the doubt we assume they can get all 300,000 alleged 2019 petition signers to sign again, accounting for an early pad to their numbers, that’s going to leave them distantly short of the number needed just like 2019.

But for the sake of argument, let’s say the Recall Polis 2020 campaign is being completely honest about their numbers, and have actually managed through a herculean yet somehow concealed effort to collect over 200,000 signatures to qualify a recall election question for the ballot at some point after the 2020 elections.

Folks, do you realize how much effort is not being put into winning the election on November 3rd if this is true? The energy expended by Republicans on organizing the Polis recall petition drive on the scale they are claiming is underway now, with a deadline ten days after the election, is such a perfect diversion of resources that Democrats should raise money to help them. Any Republican with even the most minimal sense of self-preservation should be screaming at the top of their lungs to abandon this folly and focus on what actually matters while they still can.

For all of these reasons, we’ll believe it when we see the proof. And we doubt that will ever happen.