AG WANTS SUIT ON MARIJUANA INITIATIVE DISMISSED

CARSON CITY -- The state attorney general's office has filed a motion
asking the U.S. District Court in Las Vegas to dismiss a suit that
seeks to get the marijuana initiative petition on the November ballot.

The motion, filed Friday, argues that a section of the Nevada
Constitution defining signature requirements for an initiative
petition is valid and an Idaho court case decision does not apply in
this state.

U.S. District Judge James Mahan has issued a temporary restraining
order stopping Secretary of State Dean Heller from taking further
action on the petition to allow adults to possess and use one ounce of
marijuana. He will hear oral arguments Friday.

In order to qualify for Nevada's ballot, an initiative petition must
have the signatures of 10 percent of the voters and 10 percent of the
voters in 13 of the state's 17 counties.

The Committee to Regulate and Control Marijuana, the Marijuana Policy
Project and the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada are
challenging the section requiring that 10 percent of the voters are
required in 13 of the 17 counties.

They refer to a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in
an Idaho case that required an initiative petition to have six percent
of the signatures of the qualified voters in the state including six
percent of the qualified voters in each of at least half of Idaho's 44
counties. The appeals court invalidated that requirement.

It said, "Because some of Idaho's counties are far more heavily
populated than others, an initiative that is popular primarily with
voters in sparsely populated counties can reach the ballot with
support of many fewer voters than can an initiative that is popular
primarily with voters in densely populated counties."

Those in support of the marijuana petition cite that case as precedent
for tossing out the 13-county requirement in Nevada.

Assistant Solicitor General Richard Linstrom and Senior Deputy
Attorney General Victoria T. Oldenburg say the Idaho case is different
than the Nevada issue.

"Unlike Idaho, only two counties in Nevada, Clark and Washoe, are
regularly populated by the vast majority of Nevada's registered voters."

In June this year, the two counties held 85 percent of the registered
voters.

"Because Clark County and Washoe County hold such a huge percentage of
Nevada's registered voters, a statewide initiative that is popular
with registered voters in Nevada's two largest counties could reach
the ballot without the support of any of Nevada's other 15 sparsely
populated counties," wrote Linstrom and Oldenburg.

They said if the requirement for 10 percent of signatures in 13
counties is struck down, the two major counties "could completely
control the statewide initiative process. Preventing one or two
counties from completely taking over statewide initiatives is
certainly a compelling state interest, and the 13-county rule is
narrowly tailored to serve that interest."

The marijuana petition was also found to be defective and 17,872
signatures were not counted in Clark County because some of the
petition document affidavits were not signed by registered voters. In
the case of two other initiatives, a District Court judge in Carson
City ruled that requirement was invalid.

The secretary of state's office added those 17,872 signatures back to
the petition in Clark County, but the petition was still 4,629
signatures short of meeting the 10 percent requirement in Clark
County. The petition meets the 10 percent requirement in 12 of the 17
counties. The petition has 50,088 signatures but needs 51,337 for the
statewide total.