State Senate candidate Zach Neumann makes the ballot

DENVER, March 13, 2018 -- Secretary of State Wayne Williams announced today that Democratic state Senate candidate Zach Neumann of Denver has successfully petitioned onto the ballot.

Neumann is running for the seat now held by Sen. Irene Aguilar, D-Denver, who is term limited. He submitted his petitions to the Secretary of State's office on Feb. 26. Here is the signature breakdown after the petitions were reviewed:

Required: 1,000

Turned in: 1,678

Rejected:  282

Accepted: 1,396

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.

This is the first year that petition signatures have been checked to make sure they match voter signatures on file. Neumann was given the chance to cure 66 signatures but declined because he already had enough signatures to make the ballot. Other reasons signatures were rejected included the signer was not a Democrat or did not live in the district. Neumann did cure some issues with circulator affidavits.

Neumann is the second candidate to successfully petition onto the ballot. Previously Willliams announced that congressional candidate Darryl Glenn made the ballot.

There are two ways to get on the ballot in Colorado: the petition process, which requires collecting valid voter signatures from a certain amount of members of your own party, or going through the caucus system, a process that began March 6 with precinct caucuses. The primary is June 26.