APPEAL FOCUSES ON VOTER REGISTRATIONS

An appeal of a federal judge's decision earlier this month could open
the door to allowing a marijuana legalization initiative to appear on
the November ballot.

Lawyers for the group pushing the marijuana petition and the American
Civil Liberties Union of Nevada filed an appeal Friday afternoon with
the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals seeking to overturn part of a
U.S. District Judge James Mahan's Aug. 13 ruling.

The appeal challenges Mahan's decision to disallow petition signatures
from people who filled out voter registration forms when they signed
the petition being circulated by the group Committee to Regulate and
Control Marijuana.

The appeal claims that those people effectively became registered
voters when they filled out the form, and therefore their signatures
should be counted.

"The state does not have an interest in nullifying the signatures of
undeniably registered voters based on an arbitrary rule that says that
a person only becomes a registered voter at the time an application is
postmarked or delivered, and not at the time they swear an oath to the
facts contained in the application form," the appeal states.

Mahan also struck down Nevada's "13-county" rule, which requires
petition circulators to obtain signatures from 10 percent of the
people who voted in the last election in 13 of the state's 17
counties, as well as the requirement that calls for a second person to
sign off on the signatures circulators collect.

Those two decisions are not being appealed by the pro-marijuana group,
which is working to put a question on the ballot that would allow
adults to legally posses up to one ounce of marijuana.

Group spokeswoman Jennifer Knight said the appeal should be successful
because other counties, such as Humboldt County, counted petition
signatures from people who registered at the same time they signed the
petition.