Third time no charm for tax petition

Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2004 | 9:41 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- After a third count, the referendum petition to repeal the $833.5 million tax increase has come up short again, failing to garner the signatures needed to put the issue on the November ballot.

Joel Hansen, attorney for Nevadans for Sound Government, said Tuesday he has been notified by the secretary of state's office that the petition has failed to qualify.

A spokesman for the secretary of state's office said late Tuesday it was still trying to verify the final count and the results would be released Wednesday.

But Hansen said the fight if far from over. He said members of the organization are going to the secretary of state's office to check every signature that has been disqualified.

"We don't trust some of the county clerks that have been opposed to our cause," he said.

The organization turned in more than 60,000 signatures of registered voters; 51,337 were needed to qualify the issue for the election.

Registrars of voters and county clerks did an initial count and found there were 49,207 valid signatures. In the major counties a sampling of the ballots was conducted to determine the number of valid names.

Because the count was so close, Secretary of State Dean Heller ordered 100 percent of the signatures be verified. That showed there were 46,789 signatures of valid registered voters -- less than the original county tally.

Nevadans for Sound Government then alleged that more than 4,000 names were improperly disqualified. The group said it registered voters on the same day the petition was signed by these people and those voters should count.

It jumped on the coattails of supporters of a marijuana petition, who are in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals arguing that issue.

Heller then ordered another count to determine how many of the people who signed the petition and registered to vote on the same day were not counted on the petition.

The latest count showed 2,745 signatures had been disqualified in Clark County and 80 signatures in Washoe County because voters registered the same day as they signed the petition. There was only a smattering of votes from rural Nevada in which the signatures were disqualified.

So the petition is still about 1,500 short.

District Judge Bill Maddox heard arguments Tuesday on a suit by the Nevada Taxpayers Association to knock the tax petition off the ballot on legal grounds. Maddox took the arguments under submission.

But he indicated that if the count was still short, he might not rule on the legal issues.