Colorado's Bloated Constitution Rivals Alabama's Word Count

Aspen —"Running about 373,000 words, the longest constitution in the world is that of the State of Alabama."

That’s the hook. But let’s talk about us.

The Vail Daily ran an opinion piece by Robbins this week. The math is ugly. The U.S. Constitution is 7,600 words. It runs 343 million people. Our state document babbles on for more than 84,000 words. We run six million.

Read that again.

We use ten times the ink to govern two percent of the population.

Why?

Robbins argues we’ve turned the state constitution into a junk drawer. In California, a ballot measure usually becomes a statute. Here, it’s different. In the recent mid-term election, six of fourteen statewide measures proposed constitutional amendments. Seven proposed statutory changes. One did both.

The short version: We love putting things in the Constitution because it protects them.

An ordinary statute can be changed by a simple legislative majority. A constitutional amendment generally requires 55% of the votes. It also demands geographic distribution of signatures, not just a raw number. That’s a higher bar. It makes the policy harder to undo.

Political groups know this. They aren’t trying to fix a broken system. They’re trying to lock in a win. Once a policy is in the Constitution, the General Assembly can’t just vote it out next year. They have to go back to the voters. That’s a powerful shield.

But there’s a cost.

A bloated constitution is hard to read. It’s hard to understand. It invites confusion. When the document gets too long, it stops being a guide and starts being a maze. People don’t know what the rules are. Lawyers spend hours untangling contradictions. Voters cast ballots without fully grasping the implications.

This isn’t unique to Colorado, but we’re in the top tier. Alabama and India lead the pack. We’re right behind them. That’s not a badge of honor. It’s a warning sign.

The initiative process, adopted in 1910 and first used in 1912, was meant to give citizens direct power. It works. But we’ve overused it. We treat the Constitution like a patchwork quilt, adding a new square every time a group wants protection.

What are we not saying?

We’re not admitting that the General Assembly is lazy. If lawmakers did their jobs, fewer issues would spill onto the ballot. We’re not acknowledging that some amendments are redundant. We’re not noting that the 55% threshold can be gamed by well-funded campaigns that dominate certain counties.

The document is growing. It’s counting.

Robbins calls it "fiddlin’." He’s right. We’re tinkering with the foundation of the state while the house leaks.

Is it worth watching? Yes. The next election will likely bring more constitutional initiatives. The word count will climb. The complexity will deepen.

We have a choice.

We can keep adding. We can protect policies. We can make the document longer, heavier, and harder to navigate.

Or we can start cleaning up.

We can repeal outdated provisions. We can consolidate overlapping rules. We can move minor details out of the Constitution and into statutes where they belong.

But that takes political will. And we’re short on that.

So, for now, we keep going.

We keep amending. We keep protecting. We keep growing.

The document babbles on.