Judge asked to OK late pot petitions

By Matt Pordum (contact)

Friday, June 25, 2004 | 9:08 a.m.

A group trying to put an initiative on the Nov. 2 ballot to legalize possession of up to 1 ounce of marijuana has asked a judge to determine whether the Clark County registrar is "disenfranchising voters" by not accepting 6,000 signatures after the deadline.

District Judge Kenneth Cory was to hear the matter today, but according to Larry Lomax, Clark County registrar of voters, unless Cory changes the law there is nothing that can be done.

Lomax said under the law he could not accept the 6,000 signatures that the committee overlooked and forgot to turn in by the June 15 deadline.

Lomax said the law specifically requires all pages of a state petition to be turned in on the same day, and that day cannot be any later then the third Tuesday of June, which this year was June 15.

Lomax said he explained the legalities to Billy Rogers, president of The Southwest Group, the political consulting firm seeking to qualify the petitions.

"Nothing gives me the authority to accept these 6,000 signatures," Lomax said. "On Friday night I explained to Billy (Rogers) the box of signatures couldn't be accepted. The law tells us what to do, and the judge will have to overrule the law to change this."

Rogers, however, says a very simple remedy to the situation exists -- accepting the 6,000 signatures.

"Ultimately what this comes down to is you have registered voters who signed the petition with the expectation their signature would count, and if a remedy exists in the raw count stage or the verification stage, these signatures should count."

Rogers said it took him personally two hours to count the box of 6,000 signatures that never made it to the registrar's office, and believes it would only take 30 minutes for four people to count them. He doesn't feel 30 minutes is a burden, when not counting them equates to disenfranchising registered voters.

How the box of 6,000 signatures never made it to the registrar's office is a mystery to Rogers. He said all of the signatures were kept under lock and key in his office until June 14 when they were moved to a counting room. Rogers said five people bundled the petitions into groups of 25, and those bundles were placed in boxes.

Rogers said 40,990 signatures from Clark County were turned in for verification on June 15. Upon walking into his office on Saturday, however, he said he was shocked to see a box sitting in his chair. Rogers opened the box to find signed petitions.

"We don't know if it was a mistake or if it was the result of malicious intent," Rogers said. "All we know is the box shows up on Saturday and I don't have any idea who put the box there. I would say whoever put it there didn't tell me because they made a gross error and didn't want to fess up to it or it was an act of malice."

Rogers believes if the signatures were counted one by one in Clark County the issue of the 6,000 signatures that weren't turned in wouldn't be a problem, but in Clark County a random certification method is employed.

Rogers said 1,600 signatures are selected from the minimum of 31,360 signatures required and verified accordingly.

As of Thursday a raw count determined the committee had enough signatures in 14 counties, but they would still have to be verified.