Colorado voters are probably going to have the final say on whether to keep electing presidents the way we always have or give the candidate who wins the national popular vote all nine of the state’s Electoral College votes.

Coloradans Vote, a group hoping put the question to voters in November 2020, submitted more than enough signatures to qualify for the ballot to the Secretary of State’s Office Thursday afternoon.

They needed 124,632 valid signatures from registered voters. Rose Pugliese, a Mesa County commissioner and organizer for Coloradans Vote, said they had 227,198 — a record-breaking number for statewide ballot initiatives in Colorado.

“Over 100,000 of those signatures are from volunteer circulators, which is historic for Colorado,” said Monument Mayor Don Wilson, another organizer.

The Secretary of State’s Office has until Aug. 30 to validate the signatures; about 20 percent usually get tossed for a variety of reasons. If Wilson and Pugliese succeed, then voters will decide whether to repeal a law passed by Democrats during the 2019 legislative session to join Colorado to something called the national popular vote interstate compact.

The compact says each state promises to give their Electoral Colleges votes to the winner of the national popular vote no matter who won in each state. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia have joined the compact for a total of 196 electoral votes. That’s less than the 270 votes needed to elect a president, and the compact — as well as the law in Colorado — won’t go into effect until it clears that threshold.

“People feel that giving away your electoral votes without a vote of the people is overstepping,” Wilson said.

Wilson, Pugliese and the other opponents of the national popular vote say switching to this method of electing presidents gives a handful of states with large populations (New York, California) an outsized voice in deciding who gets to be president.

Supporters of the switch argue that one vote shouldn’t count more than another just because someone lives in a different state and popular vote is how we elect every other office.

“It’s time to put voters ahead of partisan politics,” said Toni Larson, Director of Advocacy for the League of Women Voters of Colorado. “Opponents have engineered this ballot referendum solely because they believe a National Popular Vote would put them at a political disadvantage. In fact, a National Popular Vote is the only way to guarantee that every vote – Republican, Democrat, or Independent – actually makes a difference in who’s elected president.”