Marijuana initiative falls short in county

Thursday, July 8, 2004 | 11:13 a.m.

The Clark County Election Department says the marijuana initiative has fallen short of valid signatures in Clark County, leaving the measure with a zero margin for failure in 13 other Nevada counties if it's to get on the November ballot.

However, supporters of the initiative that would allow adults to legally possess up to an ounce of pot say they are confident that, when the counting is done, they will have enough valid signatures in the remaining counties to bring the issue before voters statewide.

Following state law for checking initiative petitions, the Clark County Election Department counted a 5 percent sampling of the 35,400 signatures that were submitted for the marijuana legalization initiative.

Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax said elections officials found a 75.49 percent validity rate, which would translate into 26,730 valid names for the entire petition, Lomax said. The petition needed 31,361 valid signatures in Clark County.

Because the petitioners did not make a big push to get signatures in sparsely populated Eureka, Douglas and Esmeralda counties, they now have to have enough valid names in all of the remaining counties to make it onto the Nov. 2 ballot.

The secretary of state's office, which has yet to process and review the signature counts that are due Friday, said that five of those counties have reported having enough valid signatures.

"We knew Clark County and Elko were going to be close, so if we make it in Elko, I'm confident we'll have enough valid signatures in 13 counties," said Billy Rogers, head of the Committee to Regulate and Control Marijuana and a member of the Washington D.C.-based Marijuana Project.

"However, the Clark County's numbers of valid signatures sound awfully low to me based on what we had verified."

Ronda Moore, deputy secretary of state for elections, said Elko reported its count at 104 percent of needed valid signatures and Clark came in at 85 percent of what was needed. But she cautioned that nothing is official until the review process is completed.

The other counties that already have submitted their counts to the secretary of state are Carson, Lander, Lyon, Mineral, Eureka and Douglas. Mineral, Carson, Lander and Lyon qualified the petition. Eureka and Douglas did not.

Of the counties yet to submit signature counts, "Washoe and Nye are key, and we think we are going to make it," said Jennifer Knight, spokeswoman for the marijuana committee.

If there turns out to be enough valid signatures in 13 counties, there still needs to be a total of 51,337 valid signatures statewide to qualify for the general election ballot. The committee submitted 66,135 signatures statewide.

"I think we've got that because in a number of the counties that have come in so far we are getting more (valid signatures) than we needed," Knight said. "And that is a good sign for the counties that are yet to be counted."

Also at issue are 6,000 signatures that were in a box the committee forgot to turn in to the Clark County Election Department on time.

District Judge Kenneth Cory rejected an argument requesting the court order the Clark County Registrar to accept the signatures, ruling that state law requires all petitions for an initiative be filed at the same time by the June 15 deadline.

Rogers said he has not yet decided whether to take that fight to the next legal level, though the forgotten signatures might not matter.

If 6,000 signatures held true to the 75.49 percent validity rate they would account for 4,529 additional valid names, bringing the total valid signatures to 31,259 -- 102 fewer than what was needed.