Fraud mars process, but how best to repair it?

On its face, getting on the ballot in Colorado by petition should be easy.

All that statewide Democratic and Republican candidates have to do is gather 10,500 signatures from members of their own party — 1,500 from each of the state’s seven congressional districts. To put that in perspective, there were more than 1 million registered members in each party as of April 1.

But the reality is much different. The process has been dogged by controversy the last two election cycles, from a forgery conviction in 2016 to the submission of fraudulent petitions this year by gubernatorial candidate Walker

Stapleton. And the Colorado Supreme Court is deciding whether to hear a lawsuit that alleges six-term U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn broke the rules to qualify in his re-election bid.

The situation has some campaign operatives questioning whether Colorado should do away with the petition process altogether. Even those who see its utility acknowledge some of its shortcomings — as major candidates sometimes bypass grassroots support and instead delegate the task of signaturegathering to a political firm that hires short-term workers.

“The only people who are making money in this whole deal are the attorneys and the signature gatherers,” said Republican Robert Blaha, whose 2016 bid for U.S. Senate was derailed by a lack of valid signatures and was saved only after he took his case to court.

This year, the latest controversy has upended Colorado’s race for governor.

Stapleton, the Republican primary front-runner, qualified for the ballot but withdrew his petitions Tuesday because he discovered potential fraud on the part of a signature collector. Now he must run the gauntlet to qualify at the state party assembly Saturday, the other option for candidates to make the ballot.

Kennedy Enterprises, the firm that Stapleton hired, employed people who became Colorado residents and registered Republicans primarily to do the work, operating in the gray area of the state’s residency requirements for signature collectors.

An analysis of the 19,214 signatures that Stapleton submitted indicates that more than two-thirds were collected by circulators who came from out-of-state and filed paperwork to meet Colorado residency requirements. At least two dozen of them, according to the review by the state Democratic Party, listed hotels or group homes as their addresses, attesting to their transient nature in the state.

One signature collector, Jason McCarthy, 27, initially listed his Florida address on the petition as his permanent address, only to cross through it and put a Fort Collins resource center for the homeless as his residence.

Florida court records show McCarthy has been charged with at least four felonies since 2010, including burglary and unauthorized possession of a driver’s license, and pleaded guilty to battery of a law enforcement officer.

“If (Stapleton) can’t be trusted to run a signaturegathering operation without running afoul of the law, how can voters trust him to run the state?” Eric Walker, a Democratic Party spokesman, said in a statement.

Lamborn, who also hired Kennedy Enterprises, faced similar accusations that he used signature gatherers who didn’t meet residency requirements. A judge this week sided with the GOP congressman from Colorado Springs, but the case is being appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court.

The whole situation this year recalls Colorado’s 2016 race for U.S. Senate, in which the petition process took center stage in the Republican primary. Blaha and two other candidates — Ryan Frazier and Jon Keyser — had to fight to validate hundreds of signatures the state initially had ruled ineligible.

More problematic for Keyser was a forgery case. A signature-gatherer named Maureen Moss was accused of — and later pleaded guilty to — submitting forged signatures to help Keyser get on the ballot.

At the time, Moss was working for Black Diamond Outreach, a canvassing firm hired by Clear Creek Strategies, the political firm running Keyser’s campaign and now Stapleton’s bid. Her arrest helped knock Keyser’s campaign offtrack, and he ultimately lost the primary to little-known challenger Darryl Glenn.

Steve Adams, a partner at Black Diamond Outreach, said his firm has learned a lot from that episode.

“One Maureen Moss can do a lot of damage,” Adams said.

Since then, Adams said his team has “doubled down” on training for canvassers and makes sure that new hires know the firm would help authorities in prosecuting any wrongdoing. He said his operation hires signature gatherers — rather than subcontract the work — but noted that it’s not uncommon to find firms that use out-of-state help, especially for ballot initiatives.

“They will go where the work is and the pay is the highest,” Adams said of the signature gatherers.

But Adams defended their work and the people who often hire them. “These guys are professionals, and it doesn’t behoove them to be dishonest about what they’re doing,” said Adams.

“I know Dan Kennedy,” Adams added. “He doesn’t purposely go out and defraud anybody, and he’s trying to do the best job that he can.”

In contrast, David Flaherty, a veteran Republican pollster who runs Colorado-based Magellan Strategies, took aim at the whole process.

“Time to change the rules my Colorado friends,” he wrote on Twitter. “Lower the number of valid voter signatures for a statewide candidate to 1,000, and put Kennedy and the rest of these yahoos out of business. Who cares if we have 50 candidates on the ballot.”

Three of the Democrats running for governor this year took a different approach to the petition process. Aides to Jared Polis, Mike Johnston and Donna Lynne said they largely kept the work in-house and used paid staffers, volunteers and short-term hires — or some combination of the three — to gather the necessary signatures.

“I think it works,” said Jenn Ridder, Polis’ campaign manager. “I think you have to be diligent and careful.”

Wayne Williams, Colorado’s secretary of state, said legislatures and agencies often are limited in how they can police signature-gathers — as the courts tend to be wary of restricting access to the ballot.

As an example, he pointed to a ban on paid signature gatherers passed by Colorado in 1941; that prohibition was voided by the Supreme Court decades later.

“I am not enamored with the paid-for-signature method, which I think incentivizes wrongdoing,” he said. “But the courts have been very restrictive in what they let a state limit … in respect to circulators.”