Hi. LOTS of new developments:

It turns out that Switzerland has online petitions for ballot initiatives and referendums at wecollect.ch and Arizona has them for candidate petitions at apps.azsos.gov/equal/

The President of Maplight.org made a verbal offer last week to FUND and implement open source online petitions for Colorado or Boulder, whatever is politically possible. That would make it available free for the other 37 states with voter websites. Maplight's other software already runs as part of the California Secretary of State's website. From their website:

"MapLight has partnered with the California Secretary of State to build user-friendly, open-source software that helps Californians see the money behind their elections, including tools such as Power Search and the Quick Guide to Props."

Colorado Rep. Edie Hooton finally told me that it's big nonprofits like Common Cause, the AFL-CIO and America Votes that have been blocking this for three years at the Capitol, because they're afraid it will overload the ballot. The proven solutions are to phase it in, and sometime during the phase-in, start having TWO votes on initiatives and referendums per year. Switzerland has FOUR. This isn't rocket science, this is the logical evolution of democracy and all these factors CAN pressure these organizations, our secretary of state and legislature to put it on the ballot as it will take a Constitutional Amendment.

I'm open to all ideas on how to do that. Edie Hooton, Jonathan Singer, Emily Sirota, and Stephen Fenberg are the Reps who have shown some interest. Please lobby them for this, in addition to  Secretary of State Jena Griswold  and the new Executive Director of Colorado Common Cause, Amanda Gonzalez:

edie.hooton.house@state.co.us

jonathan.singer.house@state.co.us

emily.sirota.house@state.co.us

stephen.fenberg.senate@state.co.us

jena.griswold17@gmail.com

AGonzalez@commoncause.org

If anyone knows who we should contact at the AFL-CIO or America Votes, that would be very helpful, especially whoever is in charge at their Colorado offices.