Constitution

This is something I’ve been looking for for a long time. Colorado is now letting you have a complete copy of the law for free! http://coloradofoic.org/colorado-statutes-database-should-be-free-lawmakers-decide/ has more information about it. Years ago I’d made a fancy pdf of the Colorado Constitution with LaTeX, but this has the amazing benefit that I don’t have to do it. You can download your very own Colorado Constitution from http://tornado.state.co.us/gov_dir/leg_dir/olls/2015titles.htm. Slightly strange: the constitution download is under the Colorado Revised Statutes. The link for the constitution is a web only copy. ...

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.

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? ...

With the three amendments to the Colorado Constitution passed in 2012, it was time to update my pdf of the Colorado Constitution. The three amendments were Amendment 64 (Use and Regulation of Marijuana), Amendment 65 (Colorado Congressional Delegation to Support Campaign Finance Limits), and Amendment S (State Personnel System). Strangely, there is no official version of the constitution on the state website, http://www.colorado.gov. There is a scan of the original 1876 constitution, but that doesn’t do us immediate good for today. Scott Gessler, the Secretary of State, does have a combined US and Colorado Constitution. It hasn’t been updated with the 2012 amendments, and has a host of citations and notes from the LexisNexis website, the official provider of the Colorado Constitution. ...