Legal pot petition sees ray of hope

Monday, Aug. 2, 2004 | 10:54 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- U.S. District Judge James Mahan issued a temporary restraining order Friday stopping the state from taking any further action on the marijuana initiative petition that is short of the necessary signatures needed to qualify for the ballot.

Mahan has set Aug. 13 as the date for oral arguments on the suit by the Nevada chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and the groups supporting the petition to allow adults to possess and use one ounce of marijuana.

Allen Lichtenstein, the Las Vegas lawyer for the ACLU, said the judge wanted to keep the status quo and said the temporary restraining order prevents any more action by Secretary of State Dean Heller that might disqualify the petition.

The group wants the judge to order Heller to put the issue on the November ballot.

"This is a really good sign," said Jennifer Knight, spokeswoman for the Committee to Regulate and Control Marijuana. "The fact that this judge issued a temporary restraining order in our case means that it has merit."

In the meantime, the committee is continuing its campaign, including television ads and meeting with community groups.

"We're planning for success," Knight said.

Renee Parker, chief deputy secretary of state, said keeping the status quo means the petition still failed to qualify. She said the initiative has 50,088 valid signatures and needs 51,337 to qualify for the ballot.

Parker said the secretary of state's office followed the orders of District Judge Bill Maddox of Carson City who ruled that signatures on petitions which did not contain the affidavit signed by a registered voter must be counted. In the case of the marijuana petition, slightly more than 15,000 signatures were added after the ruling.

The decision by Maddox was delivered in reference to the petitions to raise the minimum wage and to prevent frivolous suits. Parker said the office then applied the ruling to the marijuana petition but it still came up short.

Heller said he is going to appeal the Maddox ruling to the Nevada Supreme Court.

The suit by the ACLU, the Marijuana Policy Project and the Committee to regulate and Control Marijuana, challenges a section in the Nevada Constitution that requires an initiative petition have 10 percent of the voters in 13 of the 17 counties to sign the documents.

The suit also challenges the decision of Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax to exclude the signatures of those who registered to vote on the same day they signed the petition. That totaled 2,039 signatures.

Parker said the petition only succeeded in 12 of the 17 counties. In Clark County petition supporters fell short of the required 31,350 names by about 4,500 signatures.

Parker said she's "starting to wonder if we can pull it off" with all the lawsuits and challenges on the initiative petitions. "It's pretty scary," she said.

The county clerks need to have the final language on the proposed constitutional questions by Sept. 1 to get the absentee and sample ballots printed for the general election.

On the marijuana issue, she said there is no committee yet to write the pros and cons on the ballot question. Arguments before Judge James Mahan are scheduled for Aug. 13, she said. The state Attorney General's Office Friday filed a motion with the Nevada Supreme Court for an expedited handling of the appeal on the ruling of the District Court to put the minimum wage and the frivolous law suit initiatives on the ballot.

Sun reporter

Kirsten Searer contributed to this story.