A Boulder measure that counters the idea that corporations and unions have the same First Amendment rights as individuals — a concept referred to as “corporate personhood” — scored an easy win Tuesday night.

Question 2H, which pushes for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would guarantee that only people are entitled to constitutional rights, won the vote by a nearly 3-to-1 margin. According to the final 12:55 a.m. tally, 18,392 voted in favor and 6,556 voted against.

The non-binding measure also favors limits to campaign donations and expenditures by enshrining in the Constitution the idea that money does not equal speech.

Boulder City Councilman Macon Cowles, who lobbied hard to get the issue to the ballot, celebrated the victory at the Hotel Boulderado with hundreds of other Democrats Tuesday.

“People are tired of corporations picking their pockets and stealing their retirement,” he said. “It’s a way in which people express the dissatisfaction with the fact that the corporate agenda has become our political agenda.”

Cowles said recent Occupy Denver and Occupy Boulder gatherings, modeled on protests against Wall Street and perceived corporate greed that started in New York and have spread around the world, are illustrative of popular discontent with the current system of politics.

Question 2H is a direct response to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year in which the court struck down bans on corporate campaign spending after determining that such laws would limit corporations’ free speech rights.

The national group Move to Amend took up the cause of passing a constitutional amendment reversing that judicial determination. The Boulder City Council voted in August to put the referendum on the ballot.

Carolyn Bninski, who worked on the Yes on 2H campaign, said the court’s decision struck at the heart of what it means to be part of a democracy.

“I think the voters feel the corporations have too much power and they really want the people to be in charge, not the corporations,” she said. “It also sends the message that people want money out of politics.”

Bninski said she hoped the Boulder ballot measure will catch fire across the country and lead to passage of a nationwide constitutional amendment in the future.

Boulder City Council candidate Tom Johnston, who opposes the measure, characterized the effort to get it passed as misguided. If it one day becomes an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, he said the measure would not only penalize large corporations, but also thousands of individual companies and organizations with small employee bases.

“The knee-jerk reaction is that corporations are bad,” Johnston said. “But it’s not just going to affect corporations — it’s going to affect nonprofits, it’s going to affect unions.”

Contact Camera Staff Writer John Aguilar at 303-473-1389 or aguilarj@dailycamera.com.