Missouri Medical Marijuana Backers to Challenge Invalid Signatures in Court

A proposed ballot initiative to legalize medical marijuana in Missouri narrowly missed qualifying for the ballot. On Monday, supporters announced that they will be launching a lawsuit seeking to have some invalidated signatures overturned in the states largest district, in the hopes of making the November ballot.

The citizens overwhelmingly want Missouri to be the 26th state to allow state licensed physicians to recommend medical marijuana to patients with debilitating illnesses. Jack Cardetti, New Approach Missouri

New Approach Missouri, the organization behind the signature drive, were confident they had collected more than enough signatures to place the measure before voters. However, in the states largest congressional district which includes parts of Jefferson, St. Charles, and St. Louis counties election officials invalidated approximately 10,700 of the signatures collected. This left the campaign nearly 2,200 short of the 32,337 signatures that were needed in that district.

In order to appear on the November ballot in Missouri, backers need to collect at least 157,788 valid signatures. Missouri law also requires that signatures be obtained from registered voters equal to 8 percent of the total votes cast in the most recent governors election from 6 of the states 8 congressional districts.

The citizens overwhelmingly want Missouri to be the 26th state to allow state licensed physicians to recommend medical marijuana to patients with debilitating illnesses, said Jack Cardetti, New Approach Missouri spokesman. Later this month, we will ask the courts in Missouri to overturn some of these invalidated signatures, so that this initiative can appear on the November ballot, and more importantly patients suffering from everything from cancer to epilepsy will finally have another treatment option. Courts have long held in Missouri that they want voters to make these final decisions.

Proposal Could Create a Comprehensive MMJ Program in the South

In a blog post Monday, campaign manager Johnathan Payne wrote that the likely cause of the invalidated signatures were caused by human error in the validation process.

We dont believe the local election authorities in this district unnecessarily invalidated these signatures out of malice, but rather the errors were made by ...