The 20 candidates who turned in petition signatures to get on the June 28 primary ballot appear to have set a record for recent elections.

A hat tip to Jake Ryan, a reporter and producer at KVNF who called to say 20 sounded like a lot and did we have numbers for previous elections.

The Colorado Secretary of State’s Joel Albin, the ballot access manager, did some hunting and provided numbers back to the 2008 primary.

The first figure is the number of candidates who turned in signatures. The second is how many were approved to be on the ballot after signatures were checked to determine if they were valid.

2014: 11 / 9

2012: 4 / 4

2010: 13 / 8

2008: 14 / 13

The candidates who turned in signatures in this election are running for the Colorado General Assembly, district attorney, the University of Colorado Board of Regents and the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate. The number of signatures they needed depended on their race. The Senate candidates, for example, are required to obtain 1,500 valid voters’ signatures from fellow party members in each of the state’s seven congressional districts.

Every signature is counted and the process must be completed before the ballot is set in late April.

Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams earlier announced that two of the 20 candidates submitted the required number of signatures and were on the ballot.