Citizens in Charge

A final, frantic effort is underway to get voters to the polls Tuesday in two state Senate districts where Democratic lawmakers face ouster for stricter gun laws passed in the 2013 legislative session.

State Senate President John Morse of Colorado Springs and Sen. Angela Giron of Pueblo are in the fight of their political lives in an election that has attracted national attention and money.

The polls close at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

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After 30 minutes of praise to God and several rollicking, hand-clapping hymns, John Morse stepped to the glass pulpit and offered a prayer of his own.

“We need you to reach down deep,” Morse, the state Senate president, told about 100 worshipers seated Sunday beneath a vaulted ceiling at Grace Be Unto You Outreach Church. “I need you not to just support me,” he said, slowing down to emphasize each word. “I need you to vote no.”

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Colorado Peak Politics gathers the latest early voting data in El Paso County, a recall election against State Sen. John Morse is in progress:

12,174 total early votes

ACN (Constitution Party): 37

Democrat: 4,023 (33 percent)

Green: 39

Libertarian: 100

Republican: 4,923 (40 percent)

Unaffiliated: 3,052 (25 percent)

 

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Million-dollar campaigns, saturation advertising and massive canvassing have become commonplace in U.S. elections, especially in a swing state such as Colorado. A campaign underway there has all of the above – in a recall vote for two state senators that has become a showdown over gun policy and political dominance in a changing state.

Democratic state Sens. Angela Giron and John Morse voted to require universal background checks for gun purchases and to ban large-capacity ammunition magazines. Colorado passed the restrictions in March, within a year of mass shootings in Aurora, Colo., and Newtown, Conn. Gun control opponents have mounted a campaign to kick them out of office; voting ends Tuesday.

Recall elections to oust Senate President John Morse of Colorado Springs and state Sen. Angela Giron of Pueblo were once again thrown into flux this week after a Denver District Court judge’s ruling essentially made mail-ballot voting impossible. A few days later, the Colorado Supreme Court declined to hear the case on appeal and let the District Court ruling stand.

Judge Robert McGahey ruled from the bench Monday evening after hearing a day’s worth of arguments on a lawsuit brought by the Colorado Libertarian Party.

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During the 2013 Legislative Session, many efforts were made to change the way Initiated Measure and Referral System works in North Dakota.  Most of these efforts in one way or another would have had a negative effect on the citizen’s ability to initiate and refer laws.  To prevent legislative over-reach it is time to restrict the legislature’s ability to alter The Powers Reserved to the People by asking the voters to approve the following constitutional amendment in North Dakota: 

September 10 will be an historic day in Colorado.  For the first time in The Centennial State’s history, elected officials at the state level – specifically, two state senators – will be subjected to a recall election, after citizens conducted a successful petition effort.

Colorado has seen many local officials face recalls, both at the city and county level, but never a state official until this year’s recall efforts against State Senate President John Morse of Colorado Springs and Senator Angela Giron of Pueblo – both Democrats – for their support of three gun control bills passed in this year’s legislative session.

 

Recall is a procedural democratic device that allows voters to discharge and replace an elected official. At least 19 states provide for recall at the state level, and most states permit recall of local officials.

Coloradans, by citizen initiative, amended their constitution in 1912 to permit it here (approved handily by a vote of 53,620 to 39,564), and scores of recall elections at the local level have been held in Colorado in the past 100 years.

El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Wayne Williams filed court papers in Denver on Thursday to demand a date for the election that could recall Colorado Springs Democratic state Sen. John Morse.

Legal wrangling has tied up the effort to recall Morse, who was targeted over his stance on gun control measures that passed the General Assembly this year. A protest of the recall effort was filed by Catherine Kleinsmith of Colorado Springs, who claims the recall petitions used in the campaign to oust Morse don’t meet constitutional muster.

The protest was denied by the secretary of state’s office then appealed to Denver District Court.

The lawyer for Democratic Colorado Senate President John Morse made his first public case Thursday for tossing all 10,000-plus signatures certified as valid for triggering a recall election against the pol.

Mark Grueskin, an attorney representing a constituent who brought the complaint against the recall effort, said the petitions should be deemed invalid because they didn’t contain language specifying that there would be an election to replace Morse if he’s recalled.

More and more, it seems, frustrated voters are seized with the impulse to punish their elected officials. Perhaps that’s not all that surprising, given some of the disclosures about politicians these days, but this urge can be taken too far.

For example, we’ve always believed term-limits laws, which aim to put elected officials on the clock, regardless of whether or not they’re doing a good job, are overkill. Why should honorable, effective representatives be turned out of office long before they’re ready to retire simply because their arbitrarily designated time has expired?

Most of them only go on to seek election to other offices anyway, so the quest to purge government of those dreaded “career politicians” usually backfires.

A second Colorado senator faces a possible exodus from office from voters for her controversial stance on gun control.

The recall petition for Sen. Angela Giron’s was ratified on Monday, with about 1,400 valid signatures to spare.

After Giron’s support of various gun control initiatives in March, the grassroots organization Pueblo Freedom and Rights launched the recall measure against the District 3 Democrat.

A recall petition against a Colorado lawmaker who supported gun rights was deemed sufficient Tuesday, setting up the first potential recall of a state lawmaker in Colorado history.

Lawyers for Senate President John Morse, D-Colorado Springs, are challenging the recall effort. They argued that the petition was improperly worded and therefore invalid.

A University of Wisconsin-Platteville student leader may have met the repercussions for expressing his freedom of speech when his anticipated placement on the UW Board of Regents was pulled by Governor Scott Walker.  As a freshman, Joshua Inglett had signed the petition to recall Gov. Walker.

“I felt like my character had been attacked,” Inglett said.

UW-Platteville had even announced Inglett’s appointment on their website. The governor offered no reason for withdrawing the appointment.

“We’ve got plenty of other good candidates and we’re not going to get into specifics about it,” said Walker. “We’ve made a decision to withdraw the name in our office and we’ll be submitting another name to the Board of Regents.”

 

City Clerk Gigi Hanna on Wednesday invalidated any signatures asking for a recall election that were gathered before the joint publication of the notice of intention to circulate a recall petition, statement of reasons for the recall and the targeted official’s response.

In letters sent Wednesday, Hanna matched an interpretation of the city’s charter that City Manager Allen Parker gave days before Hanna announced she would take control of the recall process from Parker.

Recall petitions may only be circulated seven days after those items are published in a newspaper of general circulation, if the recall target requests that, Hanna said.