Voters likely will decide how Colorado picks a president in addition to which candidate they want for the job when they fill out their ballots in November 2020.

That’s because a group called Coloradans Vote say they have more than enough signatures to put a question before voters about repealing a law that would change how the state awards its nine Electoral College votes.

“We had 185,000 signatures as of last week and packets are coming in droves every day,” said Rose Pugliese, a Mesa County commissioner and organizer for Coloradans Vote. “We’re definitely on track to break the record” for most signatures ever submitted.

To qualify for the ballot, Coloradans Vote needs to submit 124,632 valid signatures from registered voters to the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office by Aug 1.

If they’re successful, voters will decide whether the state should stay in something called the national popular vote interstate compact. Democrats added Colorado to the agreement during the 2019 session when they passed a law binding the state’s Electoral College votes to whichever presidential candidate won the national popular vote even if that person lost Colorado.

“I believe that an excellent way to tweak the system is to elect the president of the United States in a way in which every vote counts equally, and that’s not what’s happening in the current system,” said Democratic state Rep. Emily Sirota, who sponsored the national popular vote bill.

Both Sirota and her Senate co-sponsor, Sen. Mike Foote, D-Lafayette, said they’re eager to explain this change to voters against the backdrop of a presidential election.

“A handful of states are going to matter in 2020, and Colorado isn’t one of them,” Foote said. “The presidential candidates aren’t going to care what Colorado voters think. National popular vote would change that.”

But not everyone shares their sentiments.

Pugliese said the reason people want to repeal this law is because it cedes Colorado’s voice to the bigger states like New York, which has four times as many residents, and sprawling metro areas like Los Angeles County, which is home to twice as many people.

“What I think is so interesting about this issue is it really has been a nonpartisan effort. We’ve had Democratic volunteers and unaffiliated volunteers,” Pugliese said. “Most people want Coloradans to make the decision about where their votes will go.”

Her group has more than 2,200 unpaid volunteers gathering signatures and state records show it has raised nearly $590,000. Coloradans Vote did spend the bulk of that money, about $450,000, hiring paid petition gatherers.

The way the Electoral College works is every state gets one electoral vote for each of its U.S. representatives and senators. That means a sparsely populated state like North Dakota has three electors and Colorado has nine, even though North Dakota has one-fifth the population of the Centennial State. Supporters say this ensures smaller, more rural states still get a say in who becomes president.

But Sirota said the current system depresses turnout in safe states because people in the minority party think their votes don’t matter.

“It’s very hard to argue legitimately that someone else’s vote should count more than others,” Sirota said.

Fifteen states and the District of Columbia have joined the national popular vote interstate compact, bringing in 196 electoral votes. The compact (and the law in Colorado) can’t go into effect until it has 270 electoral votes, which is enough to guarantee the presidency to the winner of the national popular vote.

Nevada’s Democratic governor vetoed a national popular vote bill from his state’s legislature in May.

Save Our States director Trent England said the veto and the potential overthrow of the national popular vote law here in Colorado could be the turning point nationally for the effort.

“I think what they recognize is once people look at the details of how this is supposed to all work, they don’t want to do away with Electoral College,” England said. “The national popular vote is a great talking point, but the devil is in the details.”

One of those problematic details, England said, is that there’s no such thing as a certified national popular vote.

Each state certifies its own totals, but it often takes weeks before secretaries of state have a final number. And every state has different rules for when an election is close enough to trigger a recount.

“There’s no recount law for a national election,” England said. “There would have to be some kind of coordination just to meet the test of basic fairness.”

Not to mention, England added, the mistrust Republicans in one state might have for a Democratic secretary of state in another and vice versa.

“Everyone would sue over everything if it looked like it could swing the election one way or another,” England said.

The national popular vote debate is also likely to find its way into Colorado’s other 2020 elections, including the race for U.S. Senate.

“Many opponents feel like this is an attack on the current president,” Foote said.

Trump lost the national popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes.

And Republican strategists see changing how the country’s electoral system works as a way to portray Democrats as too extreme. U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner donated $50,000 to Colorado’s repeal effort through his committee called Project West PAC.

“I’m happy to support a grassroots campaign to overturn this extreme law,” Gardner said. “This shouldn’t be about red or blue states, it should be about making sure every state has a voice. I will fight to protect Colorado’s voice.”