MARIJUANA QUESTION MAY HIT BALLOT

The referendum question on whether to legalize the medical use of marijuana
in the District, which failed to qualify for the November ballot because of
a problem with petition signatures, may go before the voters after all.

It will depend on a new review by the city's Board of Elections and Ethics
prompted by a court decision last week that said the board was wrong to set
aside more than 4,600 signatures gathered by a resident of a shelter for
the homeless.

In July, organizers of Initiative 59 submitted petitions containing about
32,000 signatures in support of the measure that would legalize the
possession, use, cultivation and distribution of marijuana if recommended
by a physician for people with illnesses such as AIDS, cancer and glaucoma.
To place their measure on the ballot, organizers had to collect 16,997
valid signatures of registered D.C. voters and meet several other tests.

In August, after reviewing the petitions, the board verified 17,092
signatures but set aside thousands of others, citing problems with an
affidavit of a person who had circulated the petitions and other details.
Although 17,092 signatures were more than the minimum amount required, the
board ruled the measure would fail a required statistical sampling process
because virtually every signature would have to be validated.

Organizers challenged the board in court, and D.C. Superior Court Judge
Ellen Segal Huvelle ruled Thursday that the board was wrong to reject
thousands of signatures gathered by Tanya Robinson. The board said it had
to reject Robinson's petitions because the address she listed on her
circulator's affidavit -- her family's home in Northeast -- was not the one
on her voter registration, Mount Vernon Place Shelter in Northwest.

The judge called the address discrepancy "harmless" and said that to set
aside the signatures for that reason would be "silencing the voices of over
4,600 voters."

Alice Miller, executive director of the Board of Elections and Ethics, said
that the petition signatures will now be recalculated and that "there's
still time" for the question to qualify for inclusion on the ballot.

- -- Julie Makinen Bowles

Checked-by: Pat Dolan