Ruling Revives Campaign’s Maine Marijuana Legalization Ballot Initiative

Superior Court Justice Michaela Murphy has reversed Secretary of State Michael Dunlap’s decision to invalidate signatures from a marijuana legalization ballot initiative. The ruling revives the campaign’s initiative to continue obtaining signatures in order to get onto the November ballot.

The required number of valid signatures needed to put marijuana legalization efforts on the November ballot is 61,123, and the signatures collected totaled 99,229. According to Dunlap’s report, only 51,543 were valid. Signatures were disqualified by Dunlap’s office due to signatures not matching, according to his reports. The Portland Press Herald reported that the notary’s signature on the petitions did not match the signature held in Secretary of State’s records.

In response to the ruling, Judge Murphy wrote that: “While the state of Maine has a compelling interest to ensure that all petitions submitted for consideration in a direct initiative are valid, requiring a notary’s signature to appear identically on every petition is unreasonable and abridges the constitutional right to initiative. The state has presented no evidence, and the court is aware of none, correlating the variability of a notary’s signature with incidences of fraud in administering the circulator’s oath.”

David Boyer, campaign manager for the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, commented that Secretary Dunlap’s office now has the task of checking each individual signature against voting records. He said, “We’re confident voters will be able to vote on this, on taxed marijuana. We’re pretty confident. We were confident when we submitted. We were confident when we submitted our appeal. We know they are good signatures.”

Campaign efforts to gain additional support for full marijuana legalization in Maine have been in legal limbo for the last month. Supporters can now continue their campaigning efforts.