Marijuana activists in Nevada have been rolled by a recent decision handed down by Republican Sec. State Dean Heller. To be quite blunt, it seems to be a chronic problem for him.
Heller's manual for activists required 53,337 signatures to be considered for the 2006 general election ballot. The initiative sponsered by the Marijuana Policy Project garnered more than enough. However, it, along with two initiatives on public smoking, have been thrown out.
After the petitions have been turned in, after the initiatives have been approved, after the game was supposed to have been over, Heller is changing the rules. And the new rule is over 80,000 signatures.
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Some advocacy groups are accusing Secretary of State Dean Heller of mishandling state election law this year by making arbitrary and unfair decisions.
In a move that one legislator said "just boggles my mind," Heller struck down three petitions this past week, citing a constitutional provision that some say could be interpreted several ways.
Neal Levine, a state policy director for the Marijuana Policy Project, a group whose ballot measure was struck down this week, said "the whole thing has been completely mismanaged."
The Nevada Constitution requires that a petition garner a number of signatures equal to 10% of all the people who voted in the previous general election to be considered for the next general election. Using turnout numbers for 2002, this would require 53,337 signatures.
Now, though, Heller is saying he needs 30,000 more. This is because the deadline for turning in petitions for 2006 was seven days after the 2004 election, which had a record turnout. The initiatives on the 2004 ballot were turned in during 2002 and the number of signatures were based off the 2000 voter turnout.
Heller says the problem isn't unclear election laws. He argues that the ballot process has been hijacked by special interest groups that would rather collect signatures than lobby legislators in Carson City.
"This is just going to get worse in the future," Heller said. "They're going to keep hiring a bunch of lawyers."
Ballot initiatives can have weighty consequences and aren't designed to be something people push through quickly, Heller said.
"It should not be easy for somebody with $20 million to change the Constitution of the state of Nevada," he said.
I think we can all appreciate the irony of a Republican elected official moaning about big political spenders. What's hillarious is that he even clearly says that the money should be spent on lobbyists and thus elected officials (like himself) rather than on voter education campeigns.
That's not the part that really had me laughing, though. You'll never guess how the Sec. State discovered the law he used to justify his decision.
Heller's staff members said they realized the petitions needed more signatures after an anonymous tip led them to re-examine the constitutional requirements on the number of signatures needed.
That's right, an anonymous tip. Apparently Nevada's Sec. State has never actually read the Nevada Constitution.
You can't make this stuff up, folks.