Greeetings.

Boulder voters are now using the city's online petition system, hoping to change our occupancy laws with a ballot initiative called Bedrooms are for People. And there's a brand new petition to outlaw new fur clothing sales, called The Humane clothing Act. You can read - and endorse the petitions if you agree - at petitions.BoulderColorado.gov. 

These online petitions are saving folks about 300 to 500 hours of busy work, making direct democracy as easy as in Switzerland, where petitions are just left in offices and stores and "circulators" are not required. Our working group concluded that online petitioning was more secure and convenient. Arizona has used it for candidate petitions for 9 years.

But the system has severe limitations and I'm asking your help so it can really empower regular people to participate in lawmaking, the most important part of government by the people.

The best improvement to the system would be to make it legal on the state level -and that requires an amendment to the Colorado Constitution, which requires a vote of the people. Governor Polis has promised support for this idea before, but hasn't acted. Please email him at Jared@JaredPolis.com and ask him to put an amendment for online petitioning on the ballot! You don't have to explain anything. He understands the issue. 

Doing this on the state level solves technical as well as legal problems, which I won't get into. The software would be an extension of the state voter registration system, just as online petitioning for candidates is part of Arizona's system. 

The same software would work for state-level initiatives as well as local ones. Keeping everything in one state computer system is simpler, much less expensive and much more secure than doing it in cities independently.

But before online petitioning happens at the state level, we should solve one big problem with the city system. The city now requires petitioners to choose either online or paper petitions. We should allow both. There are over 500 people who for technical reasons have been unable to endorse the Bedrooms are for People petition online and they should be able to sign a paper petition instead.

So please email Boulder City Council council@BoulderColorado.gov and ask them to allow online and paper petitions so they can both be used by a single campaign.

Folks all over the country are interested in copying our success, especially now because it can save lives in a pandemic. The former Governor of Illinois and the former Attorney General of Arizona contacted me last year and tried to get their legislatures to allow online petitioning, without success.

If we make this work properly on the state level, then it will spread across the country and really put citizens in the driver seat, unlike representative democracy, which we know from the famous Princeton Gilens and Page study only represents the rich.

So please email the Governor and the Boulder City Council and join our Facebook group, named Strengthen Direct Democracy.Again, the TWO petitions can be endorsed at petitions.BoulderColorado.gov. 
Thanks for your help!