You can fool all the people part of the time, and you can fool some people all the time… but you cannot fool all people all the time.
— No, not Abraham Lincoln. This proverb should probably be attributed to Fred. F. Wheeler, chairman of a state committee for Prohibitionists, in the Albany (New York) Time, March 8, 1886.
In Part One, we discussed the recent order from Colorado Governor Jared Polis, requesting Colroado Secretary of State Jena Griswold develop rules to allow political petition signatures to be gathered online or via mail.
“Protecting our democracy, access to the ballot and making sure citizens can qualify ballot measures and can qualify as candidates to run for office during this time is critical,” the Governor explained last weekend.
Several years ago, Colorado switched to mail ballots for all elections, allowing the state’s voters to cast ballots without waiting in line at a polling place. The system has worked well, as far as I can tell. Each registered voter files their mailing address with their county Clerk & Recorder (a process which can be handled online) and subsequently receives a ballot in the mail… one ballot per voter. The ballot can be mailed or dropped off at collection points anytime prior to the close of the polls on election day.
A process for gathering valid signatures, remotely, for a political petition? That seems to me much more problematic. I’ll be curious to see what type of system the Secretary of State can propose, on short notice.
I will also be curious to see the outcome of a lawsuit filed in Denver District Court by a group of top Colorado business leaders calling themselves ‘Colorado Concern’ — challenging the governor’s authority to suspend petitioning requirements as established by Colorado law.
Many of us recognize the delicate nature of the Governor’s public health orders during the COVID pandemic. Governments — federal, state, and local — have consistently been allowed, by the courts and by the general public, to deal with natural and political disasters by suspending existing laws and creating new laws ‘on the spot.’ Recent surveys of American citizens suggest that a majority of us endorse the ‘stay at home’ and ‘shelter at home’ orders that have ravaged our national economy during the pandemic.
A survey conducted by Yahoo News and YouGov on April 20, for example, reported that a mere 13 percent of Americans believed their own home community would be ready to ‘re-open’ by May 1 — a date the Trump administration had been pushing for several weeks. Only 7 percent thought the US as a whole would be ready to reopen by May 1.
81 percent of all adults — and, notably, 74 percent of Republicans — believed the coronavirus would be a “serious problem” for their community for two months or more, and three-quarters of Americans — 77 percent — said the entire country would not be ready to re-open until at least June.
That survey is now a month old, and attitudes may have changed — as we grow weary of the imposed isolation — but my main point is that, to judge by this Yahoo survey, a majority of American seemed to endorse the general idea that the government can, and should, shut down the economy when a pandemic threatens public health.
Whether those same folks believe a Governor can toss out (temporarily?) the well-established laws governing the placement of a citizen initiative on the November ballot, I cannot say. Nor can I guess how the Denver District Court will treat this political question. But we know that a number of proposed citizen initiatives would benefit — in 2020 — from such a suspension of Colorado laws.
The two initiatives under discussion here are Initiative 270 and Initiative 306. Because both initiatives proposed to change the Colorado income tax schedule, in slightly different ways, only one of them can ‘win’ the election: the one that receives the most votes in November. (Assuming both gather enough signatures, somehow, to make the ballot.)
Initiative 306, billed as ‘Energize Our Economy’, would reduce Colorado’s income tax rate from 4.63% to 4.55%, for everyone — rich and poor alike. I cannot believe this proposal would sit well with the state government, already facing a $3.3 billion budget shortfall as a result of the pandemic disaster. But it might sit well with certain voters.
Initiative 270, billed as ‘Fair Tax Colorado’, professes to increase state funding by $2 billion, by lowering the income tax rate on working folks — from 4.63% to 4.58% — and simultaneously raising the rate to 7% on wealthy taxpayers who report incomes in excess of $250,000 per year.
We can easily imagine Initiative 270 will find support among the state’s government leaders and employees, and perhaps also among state-funded educators and healthcare workers.
It might not be an accident that the ‘Energize Our Economy’ initiative lowers the tax rate to 4.55%… three hundredths of a percentage point lower than the 4.58% proposed by the ‘Fair Tax Colorado’ initiative.
For the average Archuleta County household reporting about $50,000 in annual income, current state income taxes run about $2315.
Under ‘Energize Our Economy’, the tax bill would be $2275. And could help bankrupt the state government…?
Under ‘Fair Tax Colorado’, the tax bill would be $2290. And could help cover the losses generated by the coronavirus pandemic…?
Lower taxes? For everyone? Lower for some, higher for others?