BACKERS OF NEVADA INITIATIVES CONTINUE BALLOT BATTLE

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Supporters of a marijuana initiative that got a court
order requiring Clark County to manually verify petition signatures
are claiming election officials are treating them unfairly.

Members of the Committee to Regulate and Control Marijuana said Friday
they have been denied their right to observe the verification process
up close.

Since the process began Monday, committee members have been restricted
to a cordoned-off area at the rear of two conference rooms where
temporary employees and county workers are verifying signatures on the
petition, which would legalize up to one ounce of marijuana.

Gary Peck, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of
Nevada, called the county's emergency verification process chaotic and
confusing.

"The point is the public has a right to expect the people overseeing
an election to do everything possible to inspire public trust in the
process," Pecks said. "They are inviting more litigation."

The marijuana committee and the ACLU filed a lawsuit in July claiming
the petition process was unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge James Mahan agreed, throwing out the so-called
"13-counties rule" that requires signatures from at least 10 percent
of the number of voters who voted in the most recent general election
in at least 13 of the state's 17 counties.

Because the "13-counties rule" is no longer valid, Clark County
elections divisions must verify all signatures to determine if they
reach that amount. The petition had failed to qualify in Clark County.

Larry Lomax, the county's registrar of voters, said the marijuana
committee had originally asked to station a member next to every
election worker verifying signatures.

"That would just be ridiculous," Lomax said. "It's a public process
and they have a right to watch us do it, not take part in it. They
can't counter every decision all the way through. We'll never get
finished with it."

He said the committee will be supplied with a printout of every
decision election employees make on the signatures.

Also Friday, state Assemblywoman Sharron Angle said she plans to file
an appeal with the state Supreme Court to place her petition limiting
property tax increases on the November ballot.

Although her petition fell 5,706 signatures short of the required
51,337, Angle said the court should order it on the ballot because the
arrest of a petitioner affected their ability to gather signatures.

Angle, R-Reno, said most of her petition circulators quit following
the May 18 arrest of Tony Dane on the University of Nevada, Las Vegas
campus. Dane had led petition circulating efforts in southern Nevada.

"We were on pace to have 82,000 signatures," she said. "If we had been
left alone, we would have met the requirements of the state. The
damage done was irreparable."

Her proposal, styled after California's Proposition 13, would freeze
the tax rate for residential and commercial property at 1 percent of
the assessed value based on the 2001-02 fiscal year. Tax rates could
increase each year by 2 percent, or the rate of the consumer price
index, whichever is lower.