Monday, May 27, 2013

Colorado Constitution updated for 2013

I've finished updating the Colorado Constitution with Amendment S (State Personnel System), which wraps up the changes approved by the electorate in 2012. You can get the pdf or the LaTeX files. It runs 122 pages, and is best printed dual sided (duplexed).

The next step is to figure out how to output in other formats, like text, mobi, and epub. I'm going to give pandoc a try.

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Amendment 65 added to LaTeX

It turns out that the entire constitutional change of Amendment 65 (Colorado Congressional Delegation to Support Campaign Finance Limits) is two words. It changes "... encouraging voluntary campaign spending limits ..." to "... establishing campaign spending limits ...". This doesn't match up very well with the ballot title.

Ah, that's because the majority of the changes are in Colorado Revised Statues, not the constitution. I hadn't realized that a constitutional amendment could change law. Sure, it can force changes in law, but the other was new to me. Of course, the ballot title does start "Shall there be amendments to the Colorado constitution and the Colorado revised statutes ...", so I suppose both could be amended at the same time. I wonder if editing two things at once violates the single ballot rule?

The real meat is in the CRS, 1-45-103.7 (9)(a).
The voters instruct the Colorado congressional delegation to propose and support, and the Colorado state legislature to ratify, an amendment to the United States Constitution that allows Congress and the states to limit campaign contributions and spending, to ensure that all citizens, regardless of wealth, can express their views to one another and their government on a level playing field.
 I suspect that, like the US Congress, no law can force a future Colorado legislature to an action, so the whole effort means about nothing.