from left: Greens Jim Harrington, Karen Kos,
State House Representative Ron Tupa (sponsor of HB1110),
and Greens Dean Myerson and Nancy Harvey.

Green Party of Colorado Achieves Ballot Status

On Monday, April 13th, 1998, Gov. Romer signed House Bill 1110 into law. This historic bill, sponsored by Boulder's own Rep. Ron Tupa, creates a Minor Party status in Colorado's political environment. A minor party can nominate candidates for office at a convention. Previously, a political group in Colorado could either be a Major Party, which conduct primaries and must run caucuses in every county in the state, or it could be a qualified Political Organization, which must petition it's candidates on to the ballot like an independent. This new political animal is a common one in many western states and Colorado is now catching up.

Whereas becoming a Major Party required getting 10% of the gubernatorial vote, one of the toughest levels in the country, minor party status can be achieved using a more reasonable process. By collecting either 10,000 signatures on a petition, or by getting 1000 voters to register as Green, the Green Party of Colorado can become a minor party.

This new law creates an entire new playing field for the GPOC. We have been a Qualified Political Organization since 1993 and are now set to take a big step forward in advancing Green politics in Colorado by qualifying for Minor Party status and thus becoming the first progressive political party to obtain ballot status in Colorado since the Bull Moose Progressives in 1914.

The law creates many routes to get to that point but we have chosen to start a registration drive. By this route, we must have 1000 voters registered Green by June 30 to become a Minor Party. The surprise is that we are already at 936! Registering Green currently makes a statement about ones beliefs but does not have a practical impact. Despite this, 936 Colorado voters have chosen to register Green. The value of that principled statement becomes clear now as we are almost at the level required to get Minor Party status (we didn't tell the legislature this while they were voting).

Despite only needing a few more registrants, we plan to run an aggressive registration campaign to bring more voters into the process and let them know that we are here.

And what will we do with this status? Well, the sky is the limit. We will first focus on getting the status and modifying our internal structure and bylaws as required by the state. Then we will be faced with a last minute decision on what campaigns to get involved with this fall. It's up to all of our supporters to help us decide what we should do.

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