The Colorado Personhood amendment will be on the ballot in 2010, no thanks to the Colorado Secretary of State’s office.  In order to get the Personhood amendment on the ballot in Colorado , 76,000 signatures were needed by late January.  79,648 signatures were turned in on time.
 
On March 4, the Secretary of State disclosed that 20.63% of the 79,648 signatures submitted by Personhood Colorado were invalid. 
 
The signatures were thrown out because of a recently implemented law prohibiting Colorado notaries from stating “personally known” on a petition as a valid ID.  The new law was literally unknown to the notaries in the state.  Even the Secretary of State, Bernie Buescher, was unaware of the law.  Although a spokesman for the state says the law is clear, it is not the citizen’s duty to train notaries how to do their jobs.  A lawsuit is currently being considered by Personhood Colorado to vindicate the thousands of signatures that were tossed.
 
Colorado law provides a curing period of 15 days for petitioner to gather enough signatures to make up for those thrown out.  It took the Secretary of State’s office a couple of weeks to count the petitions.  During that time pro lifers went to work, organizing twelve teams of twenty to sixty people each.  The teams covered the entire state and each team leader motivated their team’s petitioners to get out and get signatures the moment the Secretary of State’s office gave them the go ahead.  “No signature left behind” was their motto.  Like storm troopers, the 700+ petitioners hit every church (that didn’t throw them out), grocery        stores, bookstores, their Tuesday Caucuses and the Saint Patrick’s Day parade.  With 200,000 people expected to attend, the parade route was divided by blocks and the teams took their stations.  It’s estimated that 100,000 people were asked to sign the Personhood petition just in that one morning.  
 
“We were told that we needed to replace over 15,000 of our signatures,” commented Keith Mason, co-founder of Personhood USA. “We knew we could do it, because when you are working on such a critical, life and death issue, volunteers are passionate. We knew it would take a lot of hard work and determination, but we never expected such an outpouring of support. It is clear that the people of Colorado wanted to make a statement – that every human life should be protected by love and by law. This effort is more alive and vibrant than ever.”