|
|
Editorial: Petitioners Get The ShaftLas Vegas Sun;
December 29, 2004
In early November, shortly after Election Day, three
groups circulating initiative petitions turned in their signatures to the
Nevada secretary of state's office.
One of the petitions would
legalize small amounts of marijuana and the other two would regulate
smoking in public places. All of the petitions had well more than the
51,337 signatures that the secretary of state's office had told the groups
would be necessary to get their initiative petitions before the Nevada
Legislature in 2005. The 51,337 figure was arrived at by the secretary of
state because, using a formula set out in the Nevada Constitution, it was
10 percent of the vote cast in the 2002 general election.
But a
short time later, Secretary of State Dean Heller reversed himself, saying
that the petitions actually required 10 percent of the votes cast in the
2004 election, because the signatures were turned in after Election Day.
Therefore, Heller ruled, the petitions required 83,156 signatures instead.
The new figure ballooned because the 2004 election produced such a
heavy turnout.
The net result was that none of the groups had
collected enough signatures. Rubbing salt in the wound was the fact that
some of the groups had been ready to turn their signatures in before
Election Day but didn't because county election officials asked them not
to since they were swamped preparing for the election.
It looks as
if the courts will have to decide the issue now, as a coalition of health
groups supporting one of the two nonsmoking petitions may appeal.
If fairness alone were to resolve this dispute, the groups would
prevail because they were simply following the secretary of state's
instructions. And while the groups did file their petitions after Election
Day, common sense tells us that the preceding election was 2002, not 2004.
After all, the clock began running on the initiative process, which
includes signature gathering, well before Election Day 2004.
Furthermore, as the groups note, the election results weren't
officially certified by the state until Nov. 23, which was two weeks after
the signatures were due and were submitted.
There is no way the
groups could have possibly known how many signatures were required until
they knew what the turnout was -- truly a Catch-22. We're not great fans
of the initiative process, and believe that many of these issues are best
settled by the Legislature, but the bottom line is that Heller has changed
the rules in the middle of the game, an injustice that we believe the
courts should overturn.
(c) 2004 Las Vegas Sun, Inc
Newshawked-by: End Marijuana
Prohibition: www.mpp.org Posted-by: Derek
Other news from
Nevada
|