Democrat Mike Johnston makes primary ballot
DENVER, March 16, 2018 -- Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams announced today that former state Sen. Mike Johnston of Denver, who is running for the Democratic nomination for governor, has successfully petitioned onto the ballot.
Johnston on Feb. 21 became the first gubernatorial candidate to turn in petitions to the Secretary of State's office for review. As a statewide candidate, he was required to gather 1,500 valid signatures from Democratic voters in each of Colorado’s seven congressional districts for a total of 10,500 signatures.
He submitted 22,585 signatures and 12,698 were deemed valid. The signature breakdown in each congressional district is included in the attachment below.
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.
Johnston, who is the third candidate to be notified he has successfully petitioned onto the ballot, could have attempted to cure 649 signatures that didn't match those on file with the state. He declined because he already had enough to make the ballot.
Other gubernatorial candidates who have turned in signatures are Republicans Walker Stapleton, Victor Mitchell, and Doug Robinson, and Democrat Jared Polis.
The petition process, which requires 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.
