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Amendment 46, also known as the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, was a proposed initiative on the Colorado ballot for 2008. If ratified, Article II of the Colorado Constitution would have stated:
The State shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.
The proposed initiative was sponsored by Californian Ward Connerly. In April, 2008, a Colorado group sued, claiming that over 69,000 signatures on the ballot petition were invalid. [1] Some citizens also claimed that they signed the petition through voter fraud. [2]
Governor Bill Ritter opposed the amendment, [3] along with the Colorado Council of Churches. [4]
National Ballot Access was hired to manage this petition drive. [5] [6]
| Choice | Votes | % |
|---|---|---|
 No | 1,138,087 | 50.80 |
| Yes | 1,102,098 | 49.20 |
| Total votes | 2,240,185 | 100.00 |
Initiatives with the same language have been introduced and approved in five other states, including California (1996), Washington (1998), Michigan (2006), Nebraska (2008), and Arizona (2010); Colorado was the first state where it was defeated. On December 17, 2010 the University of Colorado at Boulder released a report [8] analyzing the factors that led to the defeat of Amendment 46. According to the study, "...Coloradans overwhelmingly intended to support affirmative action on Election Day; arguably, were Amendment 46 a clearly worded referendum on attitudes toward affirmative action, it would have failed by a much wider margin: 66 to 34 percent." The report also found that (a) many voters were confused by the initiative, (b) voters who followed the measure in the media were more likely to oppose it, and (c) proposed alternative initiatives in support of equal opportunity contributed to the measure's defeat. [9]
Oregon Ballot Measure 9 was a 1992 citizens' initiative concerning LGBT rights in the state of Oregon. It sought to amend the Oregon Constitution to prohibit anti-discrimination laws regarding sexual orientation and to declare homosexuality to be "abnormal, wrong, unnatural, and perverse". Listing homosexuality alongside pedophilia and sadism and masochism, it has been described as one of the harshest anti-gay measures presented to voters in American history.
Wardell Anthony "Ward" Connerly is an American political and anti-affirmative action activist, businessman, and former University of California Regent (1993–2005). He is also the founder and the chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute, a national non-profit organization in opposition to racial and gender preferences, and is the president of Californians for Equal Rights, a non-profit organization active in the state of California with a similar mission. He is considered to be the man behind California's Proposition 209 prohibiting race- and gender-based preferences in state hiring, contracting and state university admissions, a program known as affirmative action.
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