After Signature Gatherers Misled Voters in Boulder, Backer of Pro-ICE Initiative Brags About Democratic Support
Colorado Times Recorder by Keith Gelderloos. Published February 2, 2026
Keith Gelderloos is an intern with Colorado Times Recorder. Previously, Keith served as Editor-in-Chief at City on a Hill Press, the student paper of record at UC Santa Cruz. He was born and raised in Boulder, where he continues to live now.
Last year, paid signature gatherers were found to be misleading voters in left-leaning areas of Colorado while canvassing for Initiative 95, a proposed constitutional amendment that would force local law enforcement to work more closely with ICE. Now, a leader of the conservative dark money group that created Initiative 95 is citing those deceptively gathered signatures as an indicator of support from the left.
“In order to get it on the ballot, we actually had to go to every single state Senate district across the state and get the required number of signatures,” said Kristi Burton Brown, state education board member and executive director of Advance Colorado. “That means people in Denver and Boulder were signing this, and conservative areas of the state.”
Brown, a state education board member and executive director of Advance Colorado, spoke about the recently approved initiative during a Jan. 26 appearance on KHOW’s Ryan Schuiling Live. Advance Colorado, the group behind Initiative 95, is a conservative political organization that does not disclose its donors and has backed more than 60 other right-wing initiatives for 2026.
As the initiative would require an amendment to the state constitution, it needed signatures from at least 2% of registered electors in each of Colorado’s 35 state Senate districts, in addition to receiving 5% (about 125,000) of the votes cast for the secretary of state in the previous election. This hurdle was reached at the end of December, and it was certified for the ballot on Jan. 23.
However, based on previous reporting by the Colorado Times Recorder, it has been discovered that signature gatherers in Boulder repeatedly framed the initiative as reining in ICE and “limiting deportation to violent criminals and felons only.”
“She said, ‘Would you like to help stop ICE from attacking … nonviolent criminals?’ And I said, ‘Absolutely I would,’” said Laura Kaplan, a Boulder resident who spoke with a circulator on Dec. 2, outside of a King Soopers on Table Mesa Drive in South Boulder. “So I took the clipboard, and I read it, and I said, ‘Well, hang on a second, this doesn’t actually stop ICE from doing anything, all this does is make the local police call ICE on people who are charged with certain things.’”
As is stated in its official text, Initiative 95 would force local law enforcement to determine the immigration status of any person charged with a violent crime or who has a prior felony conviction, and to then notify the Department of Homeland Security if they are in the country illegally, or their status is unknown. Nowhere in the text would the initiative limit or restrain the actions of immigration agents.
CTR confirmed three other instances of signature gatherers representing the initiative in this manner and received several responses following the publication of our initial coverage from others who had had similar experiences with signature gatherers for Initiative 95 in Colorado.
Later in the radio appearance, Brown also claimed that coordination with federal immigration authorities was an area that “pretty much every single elected Democrat at the state and federal level here in Colorado agrees with.”
When CTR reached out to Brown via email to ask which lawmakers she was referring to, she pointed us to a video produced by Advance Colorado, seemingly showing Democrats from across the country speaking in favor of coordinating with ICE.
The first clip included in the video is of a July 30 interview with Attorney General Phil Weiser on PBS Newshour. While Advance’s video frames the quote as Weiser speaking in favor of local law enforcement collaboration with immigration officials, his appearance on the program was actually in defense of a lawsuit he had recently filed against a sheriff’s deputy who unlawfully shared arrest records with immigration authorities.
Brown’s statements came in the midst of a major funding battle over the Department of Homeland Security’s budget in Washington. Every Democratic representative from Colorado voted against the measure. U.S. Sens. John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet, both Democrats, also indicated they would not support it.
Paid Signature Gatherers Mislead Voters About Pro-ICE Ballot Initiative
Colorado Times Recorder by Keith Gelderloos. Published December 20, 2025
Signature gatherers outside of grocery stores and other public spaces are a common sight in the year before an election — but can you trust what circulators tell you?
While many states have similar processes to allow citizens to propose ballot measures without the state legislature’s involvement, Colorado is one of only 16 states that allows petition-gathering firms to pay circulators per signature. Combine that financial incentive with busy holiday shoppers who might sign based solely on a circulator’s pitch, rather than reading the printed language of the initiative, and the opportunity for deception becomes clear.
Early this month, crculators outside of Boulder supermarkets who were collecting signatures for Initiative #95 described their proposal to passerbys as a way to rein in Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) activity in Colorado, and “limiting deportation to violent criminals and felons only.”
“She said, ‘Would you like to help stop ICE from attacking … nonviolent criminals?’ And I said, ‘Absolutely I would,’” said Laura Kaplan, a Boulder resident who spoke with a circulator on Dec. 2, outside of a King Soopers on Table Mesa Drive in South Boulder. “So I took the clipboard, and I read it, and I said, ‘Well, hang on a second, this doesn’t actually stop ICE from doing anything, all this does is make the local police call ICE on people who are charged with certain things.’”
As is stated in its official text, Initiative #95 would force local law enforcement to determine the immigration status of any person charged with a violent crime or who has a prior felony conviction, and to notify the Department of Homeland Security then if they are in the country illegally, or their status is unknown.
Along with another verified first-hand account, a Colorado Times Recorder reporter recorded two other signature gatherers in Boulder, at the King Soopers on Table Mesa Dr., as well as its 30th St. location, using similarly deceptive language to describe the initiative.
The two designated representatives of Initiative #95 are Michael Fields and Suzanne Taheri. Fields runs the conservative dark money group Advance Colorado, which has backed more than 60 other right-wing initiatives for 2026. Advance has faced criticism, like many other large conservative political organizations, for not disclosing its deep-pocketed donors. Taheri is a longtime Republican attorney who has joined Fields on numerous other conservative ballot initiatives over the years.
Initiative #95 would require additional language to be added to the state Constitution, and as such, it needs 125,000 signatures in total and at least 2% of the registered voters in each of the 35 state Senate districts.
While some citizen initiatives utilize volunteers to collect signatures, others contract with canvassing firms, with a price tag that typically runs into the millions. Three separate firms have been contracted for Initiative #95, according to a list of officially licensed petition entities in Colorado; however, both of the circulators that the Colorado Times Recorder spoke to were employed by Victor’s Canvassing.
Victor’s has previously collected signatures for other conservative initiatives, done outreach for Republican candidates in past elections, and has close ties to the conservative political apparatus in Colorado.
This isn’t the first time Victor’s circulators have been caught saying one thing to get voters to put something very different on the ballot. In 2023, the Aurora Sentinel busted Victor’s for asking city residents to sign a petition for “term limits” that instead would have transferred nearly all of the city government’s power to conservative Mayor Mike Coffman. The lawyer representing that failed initiative? The same Suzanne Taheri who is backing Initiative #95.
Neither Advance Colorado nor Victor’s Canvassing responded to CTR’s request for comment.
“This is a problem with certain paid signature gatherers, as they are paid by the signature that they collect. They are incentivized to just get as many signatures as possible without regard for any of the [rules and regulations],” said Joshua Mantell, director of government affairs for the Bell Policy Center, who has experience with citizen initiatives. “When you’re trying to get really regressive, unpopular policy [on the ballot], you’re not gonna get the enthusiasm from the people, and so you’re gonna need to rely on people who are doing it for the money and not for trying to make Colorado a better place.”
Mantell is currently involved in getting a separate citizen initiative, #185, onto the 2026 ballot, which would implement a graduated income tax in Colorado. While it has not yet reached the signature-gathering stage, he hopes not to use paid circulators in the way Advance has, as he believes the policy is much more popular with voters than an initiative like #95.
The circulation of citizen initiatives is regulated by Colorado election law; however, these rules are primarily focused on the registration and training of circulators, how the authenticity of signatures is verified after submission, and ensuring that the circulator was present for all signatures. There are relatively few restrictions on how an initiative should be presented by gatherers, other than that the text of it must be clearly printed on the signature sheet.
Ed Ramey, a Denver attorney with decades of experience in election and campaign finance law, did not see many avenues for recourse beyond individual actions when asked what legal consequences these deceptive statements could have for Initiative #95 or Victor’s Canvassing.
“If these statements by circulators rose to the level of fraudulent statements – i.e., more than merely misleading or exaggerated statements – I suppose someone who signed a petition could ask the [Colorado] Secretary of State to have their individual signature removed,” said Ramey in a written reply to our question.
While one of the individuals who interacted with circulators told CTR they had contacted the Secretary of State’s (SOS) office to have their signature removed, this process can be time-consuming, and it places the burden on the individual who was misled by the signature gatherer, rather than the ones misleading them. The SOS’s office offers a form with which to make a complaint against a petition, including a box to specify if the circulator “lied about the issues or tried to confuse an elector into signing the petition.”
CTR reached out to Jack Todd, communications director for the Colorado SoS’s office, to ask about the deceptive tactics and received the following response: “At this time, the Department of State cannot comment on potential complaints before our office against petition circulators. Any member of the public may submit a complaint about conduct by a petition circulator to our office if they believe the law has been violated.”
Initiative #95 reached 75% of its required signatures in early October, and the deadline for its organizers to submit a complete petition is Dec. 26.
The legality of the tactics employed by petition circulators for Victor’s Canvassing and Advance Colorado is murky, but for folks like Mantell, it is another clear indication of how money is corrupting Colorado politics.
“There are important rules and regulations that govern how you collect signatures, but for folks like Advance Colorado, who seem to have endless sums of money from their dark money millionaire and billionaire donors, they are able to pay however much it costs to get these signatures,” said Mantell.