FATE OF MEDICINAL MARIJUANA DRIVE UNCERTAIN IN NYE COUNTY

CARSON CITY -- A petition to allow Nevadans to vote to allow the use of
marijuana for medical purposes apparently has fallen short of the minimum
number of signatures in one of the counties it needed to qualify for the
November ballot.

But Deputy Secretary of State Don Reis refused Tuesday to call the medical
marijuana petition dead just because Nye County petitions technically may be
short.

Nye County Clerk Arte Robb said just 607 of the 1,228 signatures on
petitions submitted in her county June 16 by Americans for Medical Rights
were valid.

The group needed to gather 926 valid signatures in Nye County, one of the 13
Nevada counties where it circulated petitions. Under the state constitution,
petition circulators must collect signatures of at least 10 percent of the
number of voters in the last general election in at least 13 counties to
place their proposal on the ballot.

Since Americans for Medical Rights failed to collect signatures in four of
Nevada's 17 counties, it must meet the minimum number requirement in the
remaining 13 counties -- or the petition will fail. More than 73,000 people
statewide signed the petition.

Reis said said Secretary of State Dean Heller will decide what to do with
Nye County after receiving results of signature verification efforts by
election workers in all 13 counties where petitions were collected. Election
workers in seven counties, including Clark County, so far have checked their
petitions.

Others have until July 7 to submit their results. Robb anticipates Heller
will request she recheck Nye County signatures on the marijuana petitions.
Of the 1,228 signatures collected in Nye County, more than 400 were rejected
by Robb because they did not include the address of signers, the date on
which they signed or errors by circulators.

"The laws say they have to have the date, signature and an address," Robb
said. "But I expect the secretary of state will tell us to accept them
anyway. We know we would get a lot of flak for what we did, but we followed
the law.

" But Reis questioned whether an election worker can invalidate a signature
of a registered voter just because of a mistake by a circulator or the lack
of a date. "The person who signs has no control over what the circulator
does," he said. "We want to see the whole picture before we decide what to
do with Nye County."

Robb acknowledged she recognizes some of the signatures without addresses
are of people who are registered voters in Tonopah. "I am trying to do what
the law says," she added. "If they don't like it, they should change the law."

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett