PETITION GROUP SEEKS COURT'S HELP AGAIN

The group trying to get Nevadans to vote on legalizing small amounts of
marijuana has launched a last-ditch attempt to challenge the rule that
threw out many of signatures on its petitions.

On Friday, the Committee to Regulate and Control Marijuana asked the 9th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to have more judges examine its claim that
the rule is unconstitutional. A three-judge panel ruled against the
petitioners last week.

The move is the last hope for the group, which under current rules has
about 1,900 fewer valid signatures than it needs.

"We want to pursue this to its final conclusion," committee spokeswoman
Jennifer Knight said on Friday. "We feel like we need to thoroughly explore
every possibility before we give up."

The committee's request for more judges, called an en banc review, is a
common one, but very few such requests are granted, an information clerk
for the San Francisco-based court said.

Knight said the request was made on the advice of the group's lawyers.

The court is expected to act quickly, as the election process is in motion.
County election officials across the state are preparing to print sample
ballots for the general election, for which early voting begins on Oct. 16.

The process will be disrupted if any changes to the ballot occur after the
beginning of this week, Steve George, spokesman for Secretary of State Dean
Heller.

If the court found in favor of the marijuana petitioners and ordered the
ballot be changed, "the court would have to give us guidance -- should we
send out an insert (with the sample ballots), should we mail it separately,
or what?" George said.

Last week the a three-judge panel of the court ruled that people are
considered registered voters not when they sign a registration form, but
when the Election Department receives the form. More than 2,000 signatures
were disqualified because people signed the petition and signed up to vote
at the same time, and the registrations were not processed on the same day.

Also on the side of the petitioners were the local American Civil Liberties
Union and the group behind the "Axe the Tax" petition. However, that group
would still have been short of signatures even if the voter-registration
rule were invalidated.

If the court puts a final nail in the petition's coffin, the group has not
decided whether it would try again in the next election cycle, Knight said.
A different version of the marijuana initiative failed before: in 2002, the
question made it onto the ballot but was voted down.

This time at least, it may have been an expensive failure. The committee's
financial report, filed with the Secretary of State on Aug. 31, lists
nearly half a million dollars in expenditures.

Most of the group's funding came from a Washington group, the Marijuana
Policy Project, according to the report.