Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers (R) is reaching out statewide to voters urging them to aid a referendum that would make it drastically harder to amend the state’s constitution november.

If passed, the odds for any type of future gambling expansion could be drastically reduced.

Suthers, who opposed the legalization of marijuana during their time as Colorado’s attorney general, is on a crusade that is new to cease amending the state Constitution. To attain that goal, he’ll ironically first need to amend the law.

Appearing in a new commercial campaign, Suthers opines, ‘The Founding Fathers managed to get hard to amend the United States Constitution, it set fourth fundamental rights that should be protected because they knew. The Colorado Constitution is a far different story.’

The campaign comes from the ‘Raise the Bar Protect Our Constitution’ coalition. According to the team, the Colorado Constitution has been amended over 150 times, while the United States Constitution was modified just 27 times.

‘Our state calls for the initiative that is same to amend our Constitution as our state laws,’ the organization says on its website. ‘ This framework has made Colorado’s ballot and Constitution among the most easily changed in the national country.’

Previous Colorado Springs Mayor Mary Lou Makepeace is also lending her support and appearing in a tv spot.

Suthers Sulking

Colorado is one of only five states which have legal charitable, pari-mutuel, commercial, tribal, and racetrack gambling, and a state lottery. Tribes are permitted to use casinos on their sovereign land, and localities are allowed to approve casino gambling though just three have inked so.

The majority are small-scale gambling venues situated together in hill towns like Black Hawk.

Suthers really wants to keep it this way.

Officially known as Amendment 71, enhance the Bar wants to mandate that petitions to change the state Constitution receive signatures from at the least two percent of voters in all 35 Senate districts. The public that is general then need to vote in favor of the amendment by at the very least 55 percent.

Current law to maneuver a petition forward calls for five percent of the previous vote for secretary of state, but those signatures may be collected anywhere in Colorado.

Proponents for more stringent Constitution amendment regulations argue groups presently go into Denver and Boulder to search for the necessary John Hancocks, and those two cities does not necessarily represent Coloradans as an entire.

If the Suthers coalition wins, amendments would seemingly become impossible. Gaining two percent support in every part of the state, from the greatly conservative remote areas to the heavily liberal urban centers, might function as the recipe that is perfect inaction.

Weed Yay, Casinos Nay

In 2014, voters in Colorado passed Amendment 64, the ‘personal regulation and use of marijuana,’ by a margin of 55.3 in opt to 44.7 percent opposed. But throughout that election that is same rejected a motion to expand gambling.

The owners for the Arapahoe Park horse track and 11 off-track betting parlors had wanted permission from the general public to allow its facilities to include slots and table machines, with 34 % of total revenue going to support education.

The Arapahoe Park and off-track locations are owned by a group of investors based in Rhode Island.

‘East Coast casinos tried to create a gambling monopoly within our Constitution,’ Suthers concludes available. ‘It’s time for you to make yes constitutional amendments have broad public support.’

Voters had been high on marijuana, but low on gambling.

The gaming amendment failed overwhelmingly as a lot more than 70 percent of voters went contrary to the motion.