MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION INITIATIVE: JUDGE REJECTS SIGNATURES

Cory Says Petitioners Cannot Show a Rights Violation

A District Court judge ruled Friday that Clark County officials are
not obligated to count thousands of petition signatures misplaced by
leaders of an initiative to legalize possession of small amounts of
marijuana.

The decision jeopardizes the initiative's chances of qualifying for
the statewide November ballot.

Judge Ken Cory cited another case before his court and the hardships
those signature collectors faced in denying the request for a
temporary restraining order for the Committee for the Regulation and
Control of Marijuana.

"Their rights to gather signatures were infringed," Cory said of the
case involving Nevadans for Sound Government, whom he granted an
extraordinary extension to the petition deadline. "Whereas in this
case, I don't think you can point to any other showing of a violation
of rights."

The committee, led by Billy Rogers of the Southwest Group, said it
discovered a box containing 6,000 signatures four days after the
petition's June 15 deadline for submission.

In the other petition case, Cory said, the plaintiffs successfully
argued governmental agencies had impeded their ability to gather signatures.

Rogers' attorney, Ross Goodman, argued a conflict between two state
statutes should have permitted the Clark County Election Department to
accept the signatures, which had been notarized prior to the June 15
deadline.

He said the Legislature crafted election laws with the mandate they be
"interpreted liberally" to benefit the will of the electorate.

"Through inadvertent and excusable neglect, they were found after the
deadline," Goodman said, referring to the 6,000 signatures stacked in
front of Rogers at the plaintiff's table.

But Clark County counsel Mary-Anne Miller argued the statute
specifying a June 15 deadline "isn't something the Legislature just
made up." She also said Goodman hadn't proven his case could succeed
on the merits of the petition filed in court.

"They would have to establish a due process right to a second chance,
a do-over, a mulligan, whatever you want to call it," Miller said.

Rogers had sought the restraining order to force the county to accept
the 6,000 signatures during the signature verification process
currently under way and expected to be finished by July 2.

Without the 6,000 signatures, his petition faces a real danger of not
qualifying for the November ballot. The committee turned in 35,000
signatures in Clark County, more than the 31,360 required. However,
most petitions lose 30 percent of their signatures during the
verification process. For a signature to be valid, it must be that of
a registered voter in that county.

If the petition does not qualify in Clark County, the committee's
petitions would have to qualify in all 13 of the other counties for
which it met a valid number of signatures during the initial raw
count. At least two of those counties, Elko and Lyon, have a very
small margin of error.

Rogers and Goodman each said Friday they did not know whether they
would seek an emergency injunction in District Court, something Cory
advised Friday would be an option for them.

"By then they'd be done with the count, and the relief we'd be seeking
would be more extraordinary," Goodman said after the hearing.