Colorado Initiative Will Require a Detailed Review of Signatures

We told you an effort in Colorado to legalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana had turned in about 160,000 signatures, assuring them they would make the November ballot, since they needed only 86,105 signatures. Today, the Colorado Secretary of States Office announced that the signatures turned in will require a line-by-line review.

The Secretary’s Office has rules dictating which ballots require a certification by a signature-by signature review. The office starts validating with a sample of the signatures turned in and at some threshold, then project how many valid signatures there would be if they counted the remaining signatures. If that number is more than 110 percent of what they need, they can certify the measure.

But based on the first review of sample signatures, Secretary of State staffers were not able to find enough of them valid to say with certainty that the measure surely had enough. They projected that out of those 160,000 signatures turned in, about 89,000 would be valid based on their sample, or only 103 percent of the signatures they needed. So, the line by line signature count begins tomorrow and we will have to wait until February 3rd to find out if they made it on the ballot or not.

If it is approved, which is still highly likely, it will be the very first measure certified for the 2012 ballot. This week, a second measure that would legalize cannabis possession for adults but with no limits on the amount you could posses received the go ahead from the state board that they can start their signature collections drives. And also this week we have learned word of a third legalization measure is making its way to the Colorado capitol. A group of marijuana activists announced this week that they, too, intend to file a legalization initiative.

External Links:
http://www.denverpost.com/commented/ci_19775060?source=commented-#ixzz1jwNhtDxq