Colorado Judge Hears Challenge to Amendment 87 Signatures: 10 Hours of Testimony, No Ruling Yet, Decision Expected by October 21
A Denver District Court judge in Colorado heard about 10 hours of testimony on October 19 in a lawsuit challenging signatures that helped qualify Amendment 87 for the November ballot, but the hearing ended without a ruling. Amendment 87 would replace the state's uniform income-tax rate with a graduated structure, with additional revenue supporting K-12 education, health care, and early-childhood care and education; whether the proposal stays on the ballot now depends on the case.
Plaintiff Michael Andre Hancock alleges that 69 paid petition circulators were not properly registered and that the 9,849 signatures they collected should be rejected. Those are allegations in the lawsuit, not findings by the court. Amendment 87 was certified with 130,938 signatures, 6,700 above the 124,238-signature threshold; excluding all of the challenged signatures would leave 121,089, which is 3,149 below the threshold, and the measure would lose its place on the ballot.
A state official testified that the applicable initiative rules do not permit signatures to be invalidated on the ground advanced by Hancock; that testimony presented the state's position and did not settle the dispute. Judge Heidi Kutcher said she expected to rule by October 21, though that was her stated expectation, not a guaranteed deadline. As of the end of the hearing, the measure's ballot status had not changed. (GSM, based on reporting by KDVR/FOX31, Law360 and Colorado Politics)
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: Denver 科罗拉多州议会大厦。摄影：xiquinhosilva，CC BY 2.0（Wikimedia Commons）
- 2026-10-20Colorado Judge Hears Challenge to Amendment 87 Signatures: 10 Hours of Testimony, No Ruling Yet, Decision Expected by October 21This story
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