Amendment 85: Require Plain Language and Eighth-Grade Reading Level for Ballot Measures Initiative

Amendment 85 would establish constitutional requirements concerning the language used in ballot questions.

Why Vote YES?

Citizens should be able to understand what they are voting on.

Ballot measures can change the Constitution, tax policy, criminal law, spending authority and other fundamental aspects of government. Voters should not have to hire an attorney or decipher complicated legal language merely to determine what a ballot question does.

Plain language promotes informed consent by the electorate.

The people—not lawyers, politicians or bureaucrats—ultimately decide Colorado's laws and Constitution.

Position: Ballot questions should be understandable to ordinary voters. Vote YES.

Requires all ballot questions to be written in understandable language (not lawyer jargon) at no more than an 8th grade reading level. Good idea, even if most Denver Public Schools grads still wouldn’t understand it.

Sometimes the wording on a ballot is difficult to understand. As frustrating as that is, words matter when the choices that we make affect us all. In fact, we already have laws that require the titles to be in plain language. Amendment 85 would require all ballot measures be written at an 8th grade level. We recommend voting NO on this amendment. - Amendment 85 duplicates existing plain language laws and adds an 8th grade reading level requirement that could result in badly worded ballot issues. Bad wording can result in bad laws. - Amendment 85 makes it hard to include enough legal information to let us know the cost or taxing impact of the ballot measures. Even basic tax information is above an 8th grade reading level. - Amendment 85 amends the state constitution over ballot language. To make any changes in the future, we’d need to pass another amendment. This makes it more difficult for the legislature to improve criteria in the future. This is not a good use of the amendment process and could add to our confusion rather than help us. Creating law by constitutional amendment takes power from our elected lawmakers and weakens our democracy.

There is an ongoing effort specifically to convince Democratic voters that this initiative should be passed. In addition to the arguments which have already been marshaled against it, I’ll encourage you to ask yourself one, single question: if Amendment 85 were in keeping with progressive interests, why would Advance Colorado spend millions of dollars to support it? If you answered, “they wouldn’t,” you are correct. Anyone suggesting otherwise is selling something.