Group calls for complaints about petitions

By David Montero, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Originally published 01:24 p.m., April 1, 2008
Updated 11:53 p.m., April 1, 2008

A group claiming signatures were fraudulently collected to get an anti-affirmative action measure on the ballot urged people Tuesday to come forward and file complaints with the Colorado secretary of state.

Former state lawmaker Polly Baca, a member of Colorado Unity, said when signature collectors for Ward Connerly's Civil Rights Initiative approached people, they duped them into thinking they were signing something to end discrimination.

That's why Baca said her group came forward on April Fools' Day. "It is an insidious, insidious process that has fooled many Coloradans and that is why we are here on April 1," Baca said, standing in front of people holding signs reading, "I want my signature back" and "I was lied to for my signature."

However, the group produced only one person who claimed to have been fooled into signing.

Amendment 46 earned a spot on November's ballot after Secretary of State Mike Coffman declared last week that a sampling of the 128,744 signatures submitted by supporters were valid.

The measure would prohibit the state from granting preferential treatment to minorities and women in employment, contracts and education.

Backers say they are harkening back to original language of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that bans discrimination entirely.

Jessica Corry, a public policy analyst and Amendment 46 supporter, said Colorado Unity is engaging in "tired" tactics to quash the measure, and said the initiative's supporters "followed the law exactly."

Coffman's office has received three complaints from people who believe they were duped.

Dara Burwell, 25, of Denver, said the tactic used by the person who got her to sign the petition was fraudulent.

Burwell said she was approached by a young black man who talked about the importance of minorities and why the ballot measure should pass.

"Given what he said, the language of the petition and also our shared experience as black people in this country, I believed myself to be signing a pro-affirmative action measure," she said. "I signed the petition, handed it back to him and in turn he gave me a flier to a hip-hop event - which I felt was further confirmation of that recognition of shared experience."

• April 1, 2008

  2:01 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  Tommy writes:

  Dr. Martin Luther King said to judge all men by the content of their character. As long as affermative action is in place men are judged on race. That is discrimination.

• April 1, 2008

  2:33 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  Mtnsjohn writes:

  Anti-affirmative action is anti-discrimination, unless civil rights guarantees are only applicable to those of color.

  Polly Baca claims people were being dupped into signing a petition to end discrimination. Well, that is what they were signing since Affirmation Action is discrimination. Affirmative action perpetuates discrimination.

• April 1, 2008

  3:18 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  Scott writes:

  "[Dara Burwell] said she was approached by a young African-American man who talked to her about the importance of minorities in society and that this was an important ballot measure in that vein."

  The young man is absolutely correct. Once Reverse Discrimination (a.k.a. affirmative action) is abolished, then the hiring and firing of all men and women based upon government enforced quotas will cease to exist. ANY, I repeat, ANY hiring or firings based upon genetic make up will be universally illegal. What a novel concept, judging a person by their abilities and not upon their skin color or sex. Too bad the liberals didn't think of that one.

  Scott

• April 1, 2008

  3:40 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  politwriter writes:

  Why are the lefties so terrified of letting the people vote on this measure?

• April 1, 2008

  4:47 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  OhBrother writes:

  anti affirmative action is a proactive attempt to right the wrong of anti discrimination while pre planing the placement of people baased on. affirmative action was always the plan of pre dawn people trying to propel themselves thorugh history. and you almost thought this was going somewhere, didn't you?

• April 1, 2008

  5:13 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  tchoupitoulas writes:

  I would have to agree with most of the posts here. I think it is time to roll back affirmative action for two reasons. First (as someone mentioned before) it really is a form of reverse discrimination that will only become more convoluted as the ethnic demographic of the country changes (Which begs the question, if there is a shift and ethnic minorities become the statistical 'majority population', will Caucasians then be considered the ethnic minority?). Second, it does nothing but breed contempt by those for which the act was not originally intended, especially on college campuses.

  I'm a minority law student finishing off my first year. I scored well into the 160's on my LSAT and had a near perfect 3.9 as an undergraduate. However, the first thing that is assumed by most is that I was 'given a free ticket' into school because I'm an ethnic minority. Or my other personal favorite is the old standby, "I bet you got some kind of scholarship.....". Heck, if affirmative action worked so well, there should be more than the combined total of 41 ethnic minority law students in my class of over 360!

  My guess is that everyone wants to be respected and appreciated for their natural, innate abilities and not by some superficial marker based on race. I certainly think it would foster a greater sense of fairness and acceptance among everyone, especially on college campuses.

• April 1, 2008

  7:10 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  kathyM writes:

  Connerly's crew caught the same flap in Michigan. The signature gatherers' "sales pitch" there was also pretty vague.

• April 1, 2008

  8:54 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  American100 writes:

  "they mislead people into thinking they were signing something to end discrimination."

  No they didn't. Excluding whites because they aren't black or minority is also discrimination.

• April 2, 2008

  7:58 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  Acemon writes:

  People signed petitions without reading the text? They got what they deserved.

• April 2, 2008

  8:33 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  Alyssa29 writes:

  I was asked to sign this petition, and was outright lied to by the signature collector. The wording is misleading, and had I not been in a position on a professional basis where I learned about the true intent of this ballot initiative I probably would have signed as well. The gentleman who asked for my signature assured me that this ballot initiative was to protect civil rights in Colorado. When I asked if it was to remove support for minority and women owned businesses or scholarship programs targeted to specific communities he told me outright "no" that there was another ballot initiative to do that, but this was not it. Again, I did not sign. He indicated a number at the top of the signature page that I could pull further information about this issue. I wrote it down, did some research, and it is a number used on every ballot signature page that references statute regarding collecting signatures. This ballot initiative effort is taking a step back in our community and being touted with lies and deception.

• April 2, 2008

  8:40 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  wow writes:

  That pettition was pitched to me outside of Safeway, where I didn't have time to read it with groceries in tow. The pitch was misleading, so much so that when the lady explained it to me for the third time, I told her we already have affirmative action to "level the playing field", so why bother with a petition.
  Guess I came off looking like a jerk, but I figured why double up on laws?
  The signatures probably level out between those duped into signing and those confused into not signing.
  Wonder if the petitioners really knew exactly what the petition meant, or if they were as confused as we were.

• April 2, 2008

  11:11 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  Scott writes:

  tchoupitoulas,

  Your comments are precisely what I was getting at. At Bell Labs we hired non-whites/females so that we could fill our token quotas, period. Many were just as, or more, competent than the whites that were hired. Some were really pathetic, but they filled the quota board. This lead to the view that non-whites/females were only there because of their genetic make up. This view, while true, was totally unfair to the non-whites/females that were competent. It also hurt the company in that by hiring incompetent non-whites/females productivity suffered. We also missed out on hiring the next superstar that just happened to be a whiteboy because we had to first fill up the quota board to keep the federal government off of our backs.

  Scott

• April 3, 2008

  7:34 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  mah writes:

  Vote YES on Amendment 46 and end discrimination for all people!