The dwindling number of Democratic and Republican voters in Colorado is making it increasingly harder for candidates from the two major parties to gather petition signatures to get on the primary ballot.
That’s because Democratic candidates must collect signatures from voters registered as Democrats to make the ballot, and Republican candidates need signatures from voters registered as Republicans.
Petition signatures from unaffiliated voters – who can cast ballots in the major parties’ primaries and, as of March 1, made up 50% of the state’s 4 million active, registered voters – can’t be used by major party candidates to get on the primary ballot.
Simply put: Partisan voters can be tough to find, Democratic and Republican political consultants and candidates told The Colorado Sun.
“It’s extremely difficult,” said Kwon Atlas, a Democratic strategist who managed signature gathering for a handful of candidates this year.
That could eventually mean only the candidates with deep financial resources, who can pay firms a high premium to gather signatures, will be able to make the ballot through the signature route.
While the shifting voter registration numbers have presented signature-gathering problems for candidates up and down the ballot, state legislative candidates are acutely feeling the change.
Each Democrat and Republican running for state House and Senate must collect 1,000 signatures from voters in their parties to make the ballot, and they have a much smaller pool of voters to collect from. Each House district has about 65,000 voters in it, while each Senate district has about 120,000 voters.
Unaffiliated voters make up the largest share of the active, registered electorate in all but two of Colorado’s 100 state House and Senate districts. This means, depending on the district, some major party candidates may have just a few thousand voters they can collect signatures from.
By comparison, each congressional district, where candidates must collect 1,500 signatures from voters in their party to make the ballot, has about 500,000 registered voters. Unaffiliateds make up the largest share of the electorate in each of Colorado’s eight congressional districts, too, but the bigger pool of voters makes collecting signatures from the shrinking share of partisans less of a challenge.
Petition signature gathering used to be primarily done outside grocery stores and other high-traffic areas. It was a safe bet that you’d easily find Democratic voters in Denver and Republicans in Colorado Springs.
But that’s no longer a reliable strategy because so many voters are unaffiliated – and they may not even know it.
Under a 2019 law, people are automatically registered to vote when they have an interaction with the Colorado Division of Motor Vehicles. They’re registered as unaffiliated unless and until they affiliate with a party.
A decade ago, 35% of the state’s 2.91 million active, registered voters were unaffiliated, while 33% were Republicans and 32% were Democrats.
One state legislative candidate, Democrat Eric Nelson, failed spectacularly in his signature gathering efforts this year. Just 29 of 1,635 signatures his campaign submitted were accepted when reviewed by the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office. Dozens of people who signed his petition were not registered as Democrats and their signatures were therefore rejected.
“Folks may be partisan in their heart, but they are not registered (with a political party),” Atlas said. “Folks just don’t really know what their registration status is sometimes. The validity rate is really low. It can be as low as 30% and no higher than 50%.”
Campaigns have shifted to targeting partisan voters at their homes. But that poses problems, too.
Doorbell cameras, like those made by Ring and Nest, mean homeowners can screen who is knocking at their door before deciding whether to answer.
“We’re seeing maybe 20%, maybe even less, will answer,” Atlas said.
Jillaire McMillan, a Democrat running to represent House District 19 in the Erie area, said it took her campaign – through a mix of volunteers and paid signature gatherers – two months to collect enough signatures to make the ballot. She estimates she collected about five valid signatures per hour of door knocking in her swing district, where Democrats make up about 23% of the electorate.
“The big challenge of collecting signatures for me wasn’t necessarily finding Democrats,” she said, “it was finding people who would open the door.”
McMillan said she paid between $17 and $30 per valid signature for the share of her signatures that she and her volunteers didn’t directly collect. She received a quote as high as roughly $60 per signature.
Statehouse candidates, who can only collect donations of up to $450 per person, don’t typically raise the kind of money it now takes to pay for all of their signature gathering.
Signature gathering isn’t the only way to get on the primary ballot. Democratic and Republican candidates can go through their party’s caucus and assembly process, too.
But that process, which unaffiliated voters also can’t participate in, is risky.
It’s notoriously chaotic and unpredictable – look no further than tech and organizational problems at Democrats’ recent county assemblies – and a maximum of three candidates can make the primary ballot per race through that route.
In crowded races, the caucus and assembly process leaves the possibility that no candidates achieve the 30% delegate support needed to make the ballot.
In 2024, voters rejected a ballot measure that would have let unaffiliated voters sign candidate petitions. The change was tucked into Proposition 131, which would have also moved the state to an all-candidate primary system where the top four vote-getters advanced to ranked choice general elections.
The initiative failed by 7 percentage points.
Kent Thiry, the wealthy former CEO of the Denver-based dialysis giant DaVita, led the campaign to pass Proposition 131 as part of his longtime election reform work. He viewed letting unaffiliated voters sign candidate petitions as a way to move Colorado away from the caucus and assembly process, which he called “archaic and stupid and negative for our democracy.” He has tried unsuccessfully to abolish them altogether.
Thiry said he also brought the signature-gathering provision because of the declining pool of partisan voters, the limited time the state gives candidates to gather signatures, and what he sees as the unreasonably high number of signatures candidates for some offices must gather.
“There should be a reasonable minimum,” he said. “But it also shouldn’t be too much to deny quality people from running.”
Thiry said as he looks toward pursuing election changes in the future, trying to let unaffiliated voters sign candidate petitions remains high on his list.
“It’s getting higher because more and more people are acknowledging it’s a real problem,” said Thiry, who spent some $6 million in support of Proposition 131.
McMillan also thinks it’s unfair that state House and state Senate candidates have the same signature-gathering requirements – 1,000 to make the ballot – given that state Senate districts typically have about twice the number of voters in them.
And it doesn’t make sense to her that congressional candidates, who run in districts with something like 10 times as many voters as state House candidates, have to gather only 1,500 signatures.
“It’s not equitable,” she said.
McMillan thinks it’s reasonable to let unaffiliated voters sign candidate petitions since they can now vote in partisan primaries.
“If a voter is eligible to vote for me in a primary,” she said, “they should be allowed to sign my petition, right?”
Colorado’s primary election will be held June 30.
The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to covering Colorado issues. To learn more, go to coloradosun.com.
