By Colleen Slevin | The Colorado Sun
High cost of getting a measure on the ballot has given wealthy interests more power to push their agendas.
Colorado loves its ballot questions, ranking among the top states for the most on the ballot. But voters also like to say no — a lot.
In the over 100 years that Colorado voters have been able to petition to put questions on the state’s ballot, only 36% of the 256 questions that made it on the ballot have passed, according to a tally by the state legislature. Questions referred to the ballot by state lawmakers have done better, passing nearly 60% of the time.
Between 1960 and 2024, Colorado had the third highest number of voter-initiated ballot measures, behind California and Oregon, according to John Matsusaka, professor of finance and business economics at the University of Southern California and the executive director of the school’s Initiative and Referendum Institute. Colorado’s 14 statewide ballot questions in 2024, half citizen-initiated and half from the legislature, were the most in any state that year, Matsusaka found.
But a process that Colorado adopted over a generation ago as a way for voters to challenge powerful interests and lawmakers’ prerogatives has increasingly become a tool for those same interests.
Getting a question before voters can cost millions of dollars, much of it spent paying signature gatherers. That has made deep-pocketed businesses, political groups and the rich even more influential in determining which ideas reach the ballot.
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