Concerned observers doing Secretary of State Coffman's job again, and this time it could get really ugly:

Amendment 46 opponents say signatures are invalid

Opponents of an anti-affirmative action proposal have filed a lawsuit to yank the measure from the ballot, alleging that about 56,000 signatures on the ballot petition don't match names on Colorado's voter registration list.

The lawsuit, filed late Wednesday in Denver District Court, contends that 4,539 other signatures appeared more than once and that 1,799 were collected by people who weren't Colorado residents, in violation of state law. In all, the suit challenges the validity of 68,948 names.

Backers of the Amendment 46 proposal collected about 129,000 signatures -- 50,000 more than the minimum required. It's the only measure the secretary of state's office has cleared so far for the ballot.

"I think they thought that the number would scare off any challenge," Craig Hughes, a spokesman for the Vote No on 46 campaign, said Thursday.

Jessica Corry, a spokeswoman for the Amendment 46 campaign, said campaigns usually collect more than the required minimum because signatures typically are thrown out for various reasons, such as people forgetting to change their voter registration address when they move.

She said the campaign used a national company to collect signatures but that all petition gatherers were Colorado residents...

Hughes said opponents scanned all petition signatures and used a computer program to check them against voter rolls.

He said they used a broad screening process that didn't disqualify names that were a few letters off, or ones that sounded the same but were spelled differently on the petition and on voter lists, such as "Reilly" and "Riley".

56,000 bogus names? Think about the implications if that's true. Almost 40% of the petition signatures? Is merely throwing the initiative out enough of a sanction? Isn't this potentially criminal?

Stay tuned...