CITIZEN PETITIONS

Portland Can Do Better When Verifying Signatures

Medical marijuana supporters have a legitimate gripe.

No matter how one feels about the issue of legalizing the use of marijuana
for medical purposes, no one can feel good about the way the City of
Portland has handled a referendum petition on that topic.

Mainers for Medical Rights wants to put a question on the November ballot
that would give terminally ill cancer patients and others legal access to
marijuana in Maine. To do that, it needed to have more than 51,000 verified
signatures on a petition to the Secretary of State's office by Feb. 1.

The petitioners were close, but were short 2,433 signatures. The reason
they fell short, however, wasn't because the supporters of the referendum
failed to do what the law required of them to put the measure on the ballot.

Rather, Portland's election officials failed in their duty to verify more
than 3,000 signatures submitted by the group within the prescribed time
limits.

While these officials claim they were bogged down preparing for last week's
referendum on repeal of the law extending civil rights protections to
homosexual citizens, there should be no excuse for missing the deadline.

The law specifies that the city has five days in which to examine and
validate the signatures submitted to it. It failed to meet that deadline.

A democracy depends on good election practices. Citizens must have
confidence that those overseeing the process of proposing and voting on
laws for this state have the ability to carry out their jobs. Mainers for
Medical Rights have appealed the rejection of their petition in court.
Secretary of State Dan Gwadosky hopes they are successful, as do we.

To his credit, City Manager Bob Ganley also acknowledges that the
signatures should have been verified on time. That doesn't diminish the
work the city has to do, however. Whether it needs a better computer system
or more help, it is not acceptable that Maine's largest city cannot live up
to its obligations under the law.