Appeal focuses on voter registrations

Dan Kulin

Monday, Aug. 23, 2004 | 11:12 a.m.

An appeal of a federal judge's decision earlier this month could open the door to allowing a marijuana legalization initiative to appear on the November ballot.

Lawyers for the group pushing the marijuana petition and the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada filed an appeal Friday afternoon with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals seeking to overturn part of a U.S. District Judge James Mahan's Aug. 13 ruling.

The appeal challenges Mahan's decision to disallow petition signatures from people who filled out voter registration forms when they signed the petition being circulated by the group Committee to Regulate and Control Marijuana.

The appeal claims that those people effectively became registered voters when they filled out the form, and therefore their signatures should be counted.

"The state does not have an interest in nullifying the signatures of undeniably registered voters based on an arbitrary rule that says that a person only becomes a registered voter at the time an application is postmarked or delivered, and not at the time they swear an oath to the facts contained in the application form," the appeal states.

Larry Lomax, Clark County Registrar of Voters, said the move was "not unexpected" and that he did not know if it would influence the outcome.

"The law says what it says," Lomax said. "They're claiming the law should be changed."

Mahan also struck down Nevada's "13-county" rule, which requires petition circulators to obtain signatures from 10 percent of the people who voted in the last election in 13 of the state's 17 counties, as well as the requirement that calls for a second person to sign off on the signatures circulators collect.

Those two decisions are not being appealed by the pro-marijuana group, which is working to put a question on the ballot that would allow adults to legally posses up to one ounce of marijuana.