Seeing Girl Scouts selling cookies outside the grocery store is a sign of the new year.
When those Girl Scouts are actually signature collectors and the cookies are really petitions, it's a sign of an even-year election.
Tuesday marked the first day candidates running for office can start collecting signatures to officially qualify for the primary ballot. Candidates can choose to collect signatures or go to their party's caucus or assembly to qualify.
Seven candidates running for Governor, four Republicans and three Democrats, are approved to start collecting signatures.
The Republicans petitioning are:
- Doug Robinson
- Walker Stapleton
- Victor Mitchell
- Teri Kear
The Democrats petitioning are:
- Donna Lynne
- Jared Polis*
- Mike Johnston
Candidates running for a statewide office have to collect 1,500 valid signatures from each of the state's seven Congressional Districts. Republicans have to collect signatures of registered Republicans, Democrats have to collect signatures of registered Democrats. A voter's signature can only benefit one candidate. If a voter signs more than one petition, the candidate who turns the petition in first gets credit for that signature.
"The goal is to be the first to submit your signatures, because if you get approved first, none of the signatures that you submitted can be used by anybody else," said Dick Wadhams, a Republican Political Consultant in Colorado and former State Republican Chairman. "It's a very expensive, you've got to spend the money. You can't do it on the cheap."
Wadhams ran the 2016 U.S. Senate campaign for Republican Jack Graham. Four of the five Republican candidates petitioned their way onto the ballot, but only Graham got on the ballot without having to go to court to convince a judge that his signatures were collected legitimately.
"A lot people, they don't know if they're a registered Republican or not. They might not even be registered to vote, so for every one signature of a valid, registered Republican, you probably had one or two people who signed the petitions that are not valid," said Wadhams.
Candidates have until March 20, 63 days from now, to turn in their signatures.
"Every day of that two-month period that we had to get signatures, I was obsessed with staying in touch with our firm that we hired to get those signatures," said Wadhams. "You have to have a sense that they are hiring petition gatherers who do meet the requirements of the law and who are doing it legally."
In 2016, an investigation by 9News reporter Marshall Zelinger uncovered forged signatures on the petitions for candidate Jon Keyser. A signature collector ultimately was arrested, charged and convicted of forging signatures.
As a result of that investigation, the legislature passed and the Governor signed a bill that gives the Secretary of State's Office more power to scrutinize the signatures that are turned in.
*Polis has also said he will go through the state assembly process at the Colorado Democratic Party Convention in April. If he qualifies at the convention, his signatures will no longer be counted.
"If you have unlimited money like Jared Polis, you might want to go ahead and do both," said Wadhams. "He might be doing a mind game with his Democratic opponents, trying to get the signatures done and submit it to the Secretary of State, because every valid signature on those petitions cannot be used on a subsequent petition by his opponents."
Polis announced he would caucus and petition onto the ballot in a Jan. 4 email that said, "Caucusing and petitioning allows Jared to continue talking with as many Coloradans as possible."
