February 26, 2013 09:42 AM UTC

The Great Fort Collins Pro-Fracking Petition #Fail

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: Grist:

The signatures were reportedly gathered by consulting company EIS Solutions. Memo to EIS and the Colorado Oil and Gas Association: Astroturfing shouldn’t be this hard! Hell, an intern going door to door with a bag of tacky corporate gifts and some printed propaganda should be able to return to the office with actual petition signatures.

By the end of last week, the association was acknowledging that “mistakes were made.” A subsequent internal audit “identified numerous areas for improvement.” Now association officials are trying to retract the petition. And they are failing…

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An absolutely hilarious story from the Fort Collins Coloradoan today has a familiar twist:

The Colorado Oil and Gas Association says it wants to withdraw an error-filled petition it submitted to the Fort Collins City Council opposing a ban on fracking within the city…

Many of the petition signers were unaware they were representing their business; they later asked to be removed from the coalition. In other cases, COGA was unable to identify some of the signers and verify that some of the businesses it listed as part of the coalition had signed the petition.

“COGA has ascertained we made mistakes in the collection of signatures on a petition submitted to City Council last week opposing a ban on hydraulic fracturing,” COGA President and CEO wrote in an email to the council on Monday. “As a result, we withdraw that petition from the record.”

The Coloradoan's Bobby Magill reports that at least 22 of 55 businesses listed as opposing a proposed ban on hydraulic fracture drilling within the Fort Collins city limits were "inaccurately represented." The best speculation we can offer is that organizers picked these businesses out of a directory of some kind, maybe checking to make sure Republicans owned them or something. Either that, or they are just really good at botching an outreach effort.

The COGA petition drive was led by energy consulting firm EIS Solutions, whose vice-president is former Colorado Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry, a Grand Junction Republican.

COGA and EIS Solutions both declined to respond to questions Monday…

As we've reported many times about former Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry (see: "Josh Penry Just Makes Stuff Up," et al.), he may just not be the guy you want for anything subject to, you know, verification. In this case, he's managed to make what we assume is a very well-funded and meticulously planned oil industry campaign to turn back Fort Collins' push to ban "fracking"…into a punchline.