Earlier this month, we discussed the ballot proposals to restrict and severely limit oil and gas operations in Colorado – Initiative No. 75 and Initiative No. 78 – in detail. The full post "Signatures in on Petitions for Ballot Proposals to Restrict Oil and Gas Operations in Colorado" can be found here.
The big announcement of the day:
The Denver Business Journal ("DBJ") reported this morning that the proposals failed to make the ballot – the article entitled, "Colorado Secretary of State says Anti-Oil and Gas Proposals Failed to Make Ballot" can be found here.
Why didn't the proposals make it?
The proposals needed 98,492 signatures to make it on the ballot. According to the DBJ, the Secretary of State's office conducted a random sample of 5% the voter signatures to confirm validity – and a large number of signatures ended up getting rejected during the random sampling.
The DBJ article further reports that typically ballot campaigns gather at least 140,000 signatures to ensure that they can clear the number of signatures hurdle, but the supporters of the initiatives to restrict oil and gas development only gathered 107,232 signatures for Initiative No. 75 and 106,626 signatures for Initiative No. 78.
The conclusion:
The DBJ reported that the Secretary of State's office "concluded that the initiatives received less than 80 percent of the total number of signatures to be on the ballot."
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