Republican Walker Stapleton makes ballot
DENVER, April 6, 2018 -- Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams announced today that state Treasurer Walker Stapleton, who is running for the Republican nomination for governor, successfully petitioned onto the ballot.
He submitted 19,214 signatures and 11,325 were deemed valid. The signature breakdown in each congressional district is included in the attachment below. As a statewide candidate, he was required to gather 1,500 valid signatures from Republican voters in each of Colorado’s seven congressional districts for a total of 10,500 signatures.
Colorado law now allows petitioners a chance to "cure" non-matching signatures and other technical problems, such as the wrong date on a circulator affidavit. That gives candidates the ability to fix issues without having to go to court. Previously judges had much more leeway to accept signatures that the Secretary of State's office had to reject by law, leading to legal challenges.
Stapleton's campaign had enough valid signatures to make the ballot, but still opted to cure 16 signatures.
Other gubernatorial candidates who have turned in signatures are Republicans Victor Mitchell and Doug Robinson, and Democrats Mike Johnston, Jared Polis and Donna Lynne. The Secretary of State's office already has announced that Johnston made the ballot. The other petitions are under review.
The petition process collecting valid voter signatures from a certain amount of members of your own party is one way to get on the June 26 primary ballot. The other is going through the assembly, a process that began with precinct caucuses on March 6 and concludes with the Republican and Democratic state assemblies on April 14.
