PETITIONERS GET THE SHAFT

In early November, shortly after Election Day, three groups
circulating initiative petitions turned in their signatures to the
Nevada secretary of state's office.

One of the petitions would legalize small amounts of marijuana and the
other two would regulate smoking in public places. All of the
petitions had well more than the 51,337 signatures that the secretary
of state's office had told the groups would be necessary to get their
initiative petitions before the Nevada Legislature in 2005. The 51,337
figure was arrived at by the secretary of state because, using a
formula set out in the Nevada Constitution, it was 10 percent of the
vote cast in the 2002 general election.

But a short time later, Secretary of State Dean Heller reversed
himself, saying that the petitions actually required 10 percent of the
votes cast in the 2004 election, because the signatures were turned in
after Election Day. Therefore, Heller ruled, the petitions required
83,156 signatures instead.

The new figure ballooned because the 2004 election produced such a
heavy turnout.

The net result was that none of the groups had collected enough
signatures. Rubbing salt in the wound was the fact that some of the
groups had been ready to turn their signatures in before Election Day
but didn't because county election officials asked them not to since
they were swamped preparing for the election.

It looks as if the courts will have to decide the issue now, as a
coalition of health groups supporting one of the two nonsmoking
petitions may appeal.

If fairness alone were to resolve this dispute, the groups would
prevail because they were simply following the secretary of state's
instructions. And while the groups did file their petitions after
Election Day, common sense tells us that the preceding election was
2002, not 2004. After all, the clock began running on the initiative
process, which includes signature gathering, well before Election Day
2004.

Furthermore, as the groups note, the election results weren't
officially certified by the state until Nov. 23, which was two weeks
after the signatures were due and were submitted.

There is no way the groups could have possibly known how many
signatures were required until they knew what the turnout was -- truly
a Catch-22. We're not great fans of the initiative process, and
believe that many of these issues are best settled by the Legislature,
but the bottom line is that Heller has changed the rules in the middle
of the game, an injustice that we believe the courts should overturn.