Unless the supporters of the Colorado Personhood initiative can get enough signatures in the next 14 days, the proposed constitutional amendment to redefine personhood beginning at conception will not be on the ballot in Colorado this fall. KUSA-TV reported:

Volunteers with Personhood Colorado had said they collected nearly 4,000 more signatures than the 76,047 needed by the Feb. 12 deadline.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Bernie Buescher announced that a random 5-percent sample selected by computer found 969 invalid signatures. When using that sample to project the total number of valid signatures, the Secretary of State’s Office determined only 60,357 were valid.

The secretary of state has informed Colorado Personhood, the sponsors of the statewide initiative, they have until 3 p.m. on March 18 to submit additional valid signatures to make it to the ballot. In a press release, Keith Mason of Personhood Colorado, says his group can make that goal.

“This is not unexpected news,” commented Keith Mason, co-founder of Personhood USA. “We anticipated that this 15 day curing period would be evoked, and we have been diligently preparing to get over 1,000 signatures each day of the 15 day period. It will be a challenge, but we are ready to get started.”

“On March 18, we fully expect to have 15,690 valid signatures to submit to the secretary of State’s office, ensuring that the Personhood Amendment is on the 2010 ballot,” continued Mason. “Once the amendment is on the ballot, we will see that every person is protected by love and by law.”

On February 12 when Personhood Colorado announced they had enough signatures to make the ballot, Tyler Chafee, senior associate with RBI Strategies and Research, accurately predicted that due to the issue of signature validation, the initiative sponsors would be significantly short of the needed amount.

Mason told Westworld blog that the reason his group came up short was due to the fact the deadline fell before the President’s Day holiday when they had expected to collect many more signatures.

In 2008 when Colorado Personhood managed to get their constitutional amendment on the ballot, they turned in 131,000 signatures.