Hater Group Uses Trickery to Gather Signatures Against Affirmative Action

By DAN FROSCH
The NY Times

 
Uncle Toms's Colorado Petition Draws Charges of Deception
DENVER — Freddie Whitney was walking out of a King Soopers supermarket here this winter when she was approached by three young men.

They politely asked if she was against discrimination and, if so, if she would sign a petition that would legally end the practice in the state. After scanning it briefly, Ms. Whitney, a 78-year-old African-American, signed it.

A few weeks later, Ms. Whitney says, she was shocked to learn from a local newspaper that she had unwittingly lent her support to a ballot measure called the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative that seeks to eliminate state programs that give preferential treatment to minorities and women.

The proposal is part of a larger effort organized by the conservative advocate Ward Connerly, whose group, the American Civil Rights Coalition, is seeking to disassemble affirmative action in five states this year: Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma.

“My reaction was, ‘Oh, my God, what have I done?’ ” Ms. Whitney said. “I have children and grandchildren who have benefited from affirmative action.”

Several dozen Coloradans, some of them members of minorities, say they were deceived into signing the petitions under the guise of ending discrimination, and have complained to Colorado Unity, a coalition of civil rights groups that is fighting Mr. Connerly’s efforts.

Mr. Connerly, a former regent of the University of California, maintains that it is entirely accurate to present the measure as “ending discrimination,” and that the public has not been misled.

“It is not fraudulent when a person says they believe an initiative will achieve certain results and the opponents happen to disagree,” Mr. Connerly said. “Affirmative action is an amorphous term. It means different things to different people.”

Mr. Connerly, who is black, pointed out that the language of the ballot measure, which seeks to prohibit the state “from discriminating against or granting preferential treatment to any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin,” was approved by the state title board and upheld by the State Supreme Court last September.

Mr. Connerly’s supporters have gathered 128,044 signatures in Colorado, more than the 76,000 needed for certification on the state’s ballot in November. But Bill Vandenberg, a co-chairman of Colorado Unity, said his group had fielded complaints over how the signatures were collected and was considering taking Mr. Connerly to court and filing a legal challenge with Colorado’s secretary of state, Mike Coffman.

Although Mr. Coffman’s office has deemed the number of valid signatures sufficient, it has also referred three complaints of deceitful soliciting to an administrative law judge, said Richard Coolidge, a spokesman for the secretary of state.

Mr. Vandenberg said Mr. Connerly’s supporters had sought signatures specifically from members of minorities, canvassing at Denver’s Martin Luther King Day march and along light-rail routes after Senator Barack Obama spoke at the University of Denver in January.

“People were told that this would end discrimination, in some cases that it would actually support affirmative action,” Mr. Vandenberg said. “If this is how Ward Connerly and his supporters go about getting initiatives on the ballot, what does it say about their integrity?”

This is not the first time that Mr. Connerly, who has successfully assisted on similar proposals in California, Washington and Michigan, has been accused of deception. In 2006 in Michigan, a federal judge criticized Mr. Connerly’s supporters as engaging in fraud by telling voters they were signing petitions in support of affirmative action. But the judge, Arthur J. Tarnow, dismissed a lawsuit against Mr. Connerly on the ground that his supporters had not violated the federal Voting Rights Act because they did not discriminate in whom they singled out for signatures.

If the Colorado measure is approved by voters in November, it will prohibit the state from granting preferential treatment to minorities and women in employment, contracts and education.

The University of Colorado system, which includes 17 percent minority students, says it has already begun reviewing more than 100 scholarships it offers to minorities and women to decide how it will proceed if the measures passes.

For Dara Burwell, 25, one of dozens of people who contacted Colorado Unity after signing the petition, the realization that she had inadvertently lent her support to the measure was “horrifying,” she said.

Ms. Burwell, who is black and has actively supported affirmative action programs in the past, said she had been approached on the steps of a downtown library by a young black man who spoke of justice for minorities. Ms. Burwell said she had signed the petition thinking it was “a standard nondiscrimination clause.”

“I’m angry, because this is so deceptive,” she said. “I’ve contributed to get a measure on the ballot that stands for everything I don’t believe in.”