Push for medical use of pot jeopardized in Nevada

Wednesday, July 1, 1998 | 9:22 a.m.

But Secretary of State Dean Heller says it's not clear yet whether officials in the central Nevada county acted properly in rejecting more than half of the signatures filed there.

Nye County Clerk Arte Robb, whose office sampled 1,228 signatures to see if they were registered voters, said Monday that only 607 were valid. The minimum requirement for Nye County is 926 voters.

Robb said the other signatures were ineligible because signers weren't registered voters or wrote illegibly, or the people circulating the petition weren't registered voters.

Robb also said that two women bringing 90 signatures to the clerk's office in Tonopah had a traffic stop in Esmeralda County and arrived after the office closed on the June 16 deadline.

Heller said Robb lacks the authority to reject signatures obtained by people who weren't registered or didn't live in Nye County - and those names may have accounted for hundreds of the signatures that were tossed out.

Heller added that only a judge can rule that such signatures are invalid, and he may have to order a recount in Nye County.

Nevada law requires 46,764 signatures of registered voters statewide to get an initiative on the ballot. And while the marijuana group exceeded that by collecting 74,466 signatures, the law also requires that 10 percent of the voters must sign in 13 of the state's 17 counties.

Backers of the medical marijuana initiative collected signatures in 13 of the 17 counties, the bare minimum. If they fail to qualify in one county, the whole petition is lost.

The proposed constitutional amendment would allow a patient, on the advice of a doctor, to use marijuana for the treatment or alleviation of cancer, glaucoma, AIDS, persistent nausea, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and other conditions approved by lawmakers.

As county clerks continue to verify petition signatures, five counties - Clark, Humboldt, Lander, Lyon and Pershing - already have reported they have received the required number of valid signatures to place the issue on the November ballot. Clerks must complete the verification process by July 7.