This November, Coloradans could face a confusing ballot marred with conflicting questions on how the government should treat our skin color and sex.

Earlier this month, the Colorado Secretary of State's title-setting board approved the language of an initiative that would mandate acceptance of state programs that allow — or encourage — the consideration of an individual's race and sex in hiring, contracting, and admissions decisions. I'm part of a citizen-led coalition dedicated to actively fighting this ill-conceived effort.

The effort, Initiative 61, and titled "Federal Standards for Discrimination/Preferential Treatment by Colorado Governments," was designed to trick voters into supporting race and gender preference programs by disingenuously piggybacking on another ballot effort, Initiative 31, the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative [1], approved by the Secretary of State in January and designed to abolish such programs.

The CCRI reads: "Shall there be an amendment to the Colorado constitution concerning a prohibition against discrimination by the state, and, in connection therewith, prohibiting the state from discriminating against or granting preferential treatment to any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, and public contracting?"

Initiative 61 uses this exact language, but adds the following 40 words to its own version [2] that guts the former initiative's entire intent:

"...nothing in this section shall be interpreted as limiting the State's authority to act consistently with the standards set under the United States Constitution, as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court, in public employment, public education, or public contracting."

In 2003, the Supreme Court set a confusing and bigoted standard through its conclusions in a pair of cases coming out of the University of Michigan.

By a slim majority, the Court ruled that race can be used as a factor, as long as it is one of many factors used, in admissions and hiring decisions.

Like Initiative 61, the decisions were problematic for a multitude of reasons. Most importantly, by giving race or gender any weight in an admissions or hiring decisions — especially at a competitive institution like the University of Michigan — an applicant's skin color or gender can become the deciding factor.

In addition, from a practical perspective, race and gender preferences are incredibly ineffective, lazy feel-good measures designed and largely pushed by whites plagued with guilt about past discrimination. While preferences lead to greater initial acceptance and hiring rates for minorities and women, they also result in higher rates of failure for those individuals unprepared to compete at a level to which they would not have been accepted, if their acceptance or hiring had been based solely on individual merit.

The justification behind preferences is deeply flawed. Women and minorities are just as capable and intelligent as white men, supporters argue, but still need government-mandated lowered standards to succeed. Such logic is offensive to every woman and minority fighting to make it on their own in a competitive global marketplace.

Fortunately, the court's decisions didn't mandate that all states adopt such flawed public policy. Former University of California Regent Ward Connerly, a man of mixed-race heritage who is frequently identified as black, has made it his life's mission to eliminate government-sanctioned race and gender preference programs. Today, CCRI is part of Connerly's five-state effort this fall to force government to stop splitting us up on the basis of biological characteristics that none of us can control.

While Connerly is frequently attacked [3] by radical activists, including Jesse Jackson, as a "puppet for the white man," and "strange fruit," he articulately identifies the presence and persistence of discrimination. Unlike Jackson and his allies, however, Connerly believes that to overcome discrimination, our government must stop forcing people into racial categories that no longer serve an effective purpose.

In states where Connerly has already pursued similar initiatives, including California and Washington, he has been met with incredible enthusiasm and success. An America home to increasing racial diversity sees that it's unfair and immoral to discriminate or award preference based on race or gender.

Jessica Peck Corry is a public policy analyst with the Independence Institute.

I'm speaking out against Initiative 61 because, as a mother or two, I see firsthand my obligation to do everything possible to ensure that when my daughters apply for college, a government contract, or a job, they aren't treated as inferior candidates simply because of their chromosome make up. They will be taught the truth — that their gender should never be used as an excuse for failure.

Initiative 61 also violates Colorado's single-subject rule. While the first portion of its language, directly plagiarized from CCRI, bans discrimination, the second portion invented by academic liberals, allows for it. By using this structure, the initiative clearly violates the single-subject rule's provision "against fraud and surprise occasioned by the inadvertent passage of a surreptitious provision . . . in a complex bill."

If Initiative 61's proponents want to have a legitimate conversation about the future of race and sex in this country, let's have it. By trying to trick voters into supporting preferences, however, they are merely indicating a lack of faith in the merits of their own argument.

Editor’s note: Jessica Peck Corry's weekly blogs are part of a feature on PoliticsWest called "Diary of a Mad Voter." The group blog, published in partnership with NewWest.Net/Politics [4], is intended to give a glimpse into the hearts and minds of several independent-minded voters and thinkers in the Rocky Mountain West in the 2008 election year.