But Amendment 85 leaves open how that reading level would be measured. Opponents say that uncertainty could shift disputes to lawmakers and courts, while also limiting the legislature’s ability to require information about the financial effects of ballot measures.

Papa Dia, founder of Aurora’s African Leadership Group, supports the amendment. His organization offers language classes and holds voter information events. Dia said voters regularly ask him to explain ballot questions, a challenge he said can be especially difficult for people whose first language is not English.

“People that were born in this country, that went to school here, have all degrees, they get the ballot, they still don’t understand,” Dia said at a recent voter education event.

Amendment 85 was proposed by Advance Colorado, a conservative group whose president, Michael Fields, said the idea grew out of conversations with voters confused by ballot language. Fields argues that an eighth-grade standard would improve comprehension regardless of a measure’s political position.

The proposal does not require a particular reading-level formula. One commonly used method, the Flesch-Kincaid formula, estimates grade level from sentence length and the number of syllables in words. Researchers caution that such formulas can be unreliable for short passages and may reward simpler wording at the expense of precision.

Peter Foltz, a CU Boulder research professor who studies reading comprehension, said a ballot title is often a single long sentence, making it difficult to judge with a tool designed to assess larger amounts of text. He said measuring whether voters actually understand a question is more complex than assigning it a grade-level score.

Colorado lawmakers passed a separate law earlier this year requiring ballot titles to use accessible language where possible, including avoiding unnecessary legal jargon and double negatives. State Rep. Kenny Van Nguyen, a Democrat from Broomfield who co-sponsored that bill, supports clearer ballots but opposes Amendment 85. He said the constitutional measure’s undefined standard could lead to court fights.

Van Nguyen and election attorney Mark Grueskin also worry about a provision affecting future disclosure requirements. Amendment 85 would prohibit lawmakers from requiring specific wording in citizen-initiated ballot questions when that wording conflicts with the eighth-grade standard. Grueskin argues that could make it harder for the legislature to ensure voters receive information about a measure’s effects.

A 2021 state law, for example, requires certain tax-cut initiatives to disclose projected revenue losses and identify major areas of government spending that could be affected. Fields disputes that Amendment 85 would prevent such disclosures, saying any language lawmakers require would simply have to meet the proposed reading standard.

The difficulty of applying a grade-level test is illustrated by past ballot language. Online calculators put the 1992 ballot question for Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights at about a 30th-grade reading level, despite being a single sentence of 61 words. The wording of Amendment 85 itself scored an average of about a 29th-grade level on three calculators. Fields said long, single-sentence titles can inflate those scores and predicted the title board could use shorter sentences if the amendment passes.

The proposal has also drawn criticism because of its backers. At a voter education event, Aurora resident Lea Steed said she distrusted Advance Colorado and viewed the group as aligned with wealthy interests. Dia said the proposal’s merits mattered more to him than who brought it forward: voters, he said, need to understand what they are being asked to decide.