News

A new round of news reports detailing how anti-fracking initiative backers delivered a lot of “half-empty boxes” is casting even more doubt on whether the groups managed to gather enough signatures to place a pair of ballot initiatives before Colorado voters this fall. Denver’s CBS 4 reports:

“The future of two anti-fracking measures that could change the state’s constitution are in doubt. Petitions for initiatives to be placed on the November ballot were due to the Secretary of State’s Office on Monday. But on Tuesday the office had an abundance of empty boxes after scanning and submitting the petition forms.”

The news broke after Colorado Secretary of State Spokeswoman Lynn Bartels tweeted a photo of a stack of empty boxes, observing that backers of Initiatives 75 and 78 “turned in lots of boxes with very few petitions in them.” When asked by the media about the photo that the Greeley Tribune  described as “about 50 boxes,” Bartels called it “unusual.” Also from CBS 4:

“It is unusual because other measures that were turned in, the petitions were scanned in by our staff and put back in their original boxes to be sent down to Pueblo to the state agency to be checked and they maybe had five boxes left over. This was boxes and boxes and boxes. That may not mean anything but it may mean something,” Bartels said.

One of the groups behind the initiatives, Frack Free CO, published an online video showing activists transporting quite a lot of apparently ligh...