It's been a busy week here at Protect Colorado's Future.  

On Monday, we were one of several groups that submitted petitions to the Secretary of State to place initiatives on the November ballot. We are proud to say that over 130,000 Coloradans joined us in signing petitions on behalf of the Just Cause initiative, a common sense measure that will protect good workers from being fired arbitrarily. Many voters who signed the petitions were shocked to learn that in Colorado you can be fired "at will" for taking a sick day, for your political views or even for having a bad haircut. With the unemployment rate in Colorado higher than it's been in almost 3 years, we believe this measure is critically important to Colorado's families and we are looking forward to seeing it on the ballot.  

Last week we also submitted petitions signed by more than 123,000 Coloradans for the Colorado Corporate Fraud initiative, a proposal aimed at holding corporate executives accountable for the fraud that happens within their companies. Colorado taxpayers spend billions every year cleaning up the messes made by corporate criminals. One only has to look at the case of Joe Nacchio, former CEO of the Denver-based communications company Qwest, to see why this initiative is important to Colorado. As the New York Times explained in an article on the issue earlier this year, this measure would bring "unprecedented individual accountability" and make Colorado a leader in the crackdown on corporate crime.  

Some news from the recount of Democratic Primary votes from decline-to-state voters in Los Angeles County who failed to fill in the bubble marked "Democratic" as the party whose primary they were voting in.

Crossposted on DKos earlier.

I just ran across this Release!

They need people in every district to be able to get the 500 Signatures per district.

SACRAMENTO, CA--(Marketwire - August 22, 2007) - Upon announcing their intentions of putting Al Gore on the California ballot for the state's primary election, California Draft Gore has seen a surge of Gore volunteers and positive support for the statewide initiative which joins a national effort to place Gore on the ballot.

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Every election season produces broad misconceptions in the pursuit of early answers to that age-old question: "what happened?" Many of these myths - some created intentionally by spin-meisters and others simply the product of hasty analysis - cement themselves very early in the media and public mind.

Ballot measures are ripe for this type of problem for a number of reasons. Most prominent among these are the following:

• Spin - Unlike candidates, ballot measures embody a single issue - often an issue that engenders strong feelings on either side. The proponents and opponents will use any victory in pursuit of their long-term goals on the issue to draw larger meanings than the reality might suggest.

• Meta-Story - Ballot measures are not simply issues or policies, but political campaigns. Each side of the political spectrum has begun to use the initiative process more strategically in multi-state capacities as part of larger political power-building potential. If an initiative is successful, especially in multiple states, analysts will use the apparent momentum to give the issue more power than it deserves. Conversely, pundits will also draw erroneous conclusions from a surprising failure.

• Lag - The research and polling that shows how ballot initiatives may have worked more broadly to influence the election does not magically appear in the week following the election, when most of the zeitgeist heats up and then quickly congeals. The academic analysis of the post-election polling can take even longer to roll out. This unavoidable situation fosters the first two problems by creating an evidentiary vacuum that pundits and spinners are paid to fill.