Legalization Initiative Offer on Missouri Ballot ‘Ain’t Dead Yet’

Amid mounting speculation that activists may have missed out in their attempt to get a question on cannabis legalization in this year’s Missouri vote, a senior state official said this week the outcome is far from sealed.

“I can’t say without certainty if he’s going to make it or not. It is by no means certain that they will fail. That’s not dead,” Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Ashcroft’s office is reviewing hundreds of thousands of signatures submitted by Legal Missouri 2022, the group vying to get the question in this year’s vote. If passed, the initiative would legalize cannabis for adults 21 and older in Missouri and establish a state-regulated marijuana market. It would provide a way for individuals in the state previously convicted of nonviolent marijuana-related offenses to have their records erased.

But first it must qualify for the vote, and to do that, according to Post-Dispatch, organizers need “signatures from 8% of registered voters in six of the state’s eight congressional districts.” (That’s about 170,000 signatures in total.)

The Associated Press reported that Legal Missouri “almost doubled the number of signatures collected by mid-April and submitted more than 385,000 signatures in early May.”

However, signs of trouble began to appear earlier this week. Local television station KFVS reported Tuesday that organizers in four congressional districts had collected a sufficient number of signatures, but the number in the other four could be peaking.

Ashcroft’s office will make a final decision by August 9 on whether the initiative is eligible.

In the meantime, those involved at Legal Missouri are getting hopeful.

“The Legal Missouri 2022 campaign continues to work to ensure that every valid voter signature is properly counted and is excited that Missouri voters will soon have the opportunity to vote for themselves,” the group’s campaign manager, John Payne, told St. Louis Postal Shipping.

“Our close examination of the total number of voter signatures submitted by counties to the state shows that we have more than enough signatures to qualify our citizens’ initiative to vote in November’s general election — and that some counties, due to the dependency erroneously rejected thousands of valid voter signatures by temporary workers. To be clear, this is not intended to suggest or imply any wrongdoing by the counties,” Payne continued.

Ashcroft himself did not rule out this possibility.

“In the past there have been times when we’ve gone back and checked to make sure we found enough signatures,” Ashcroft said, as quoted by the Post-Dispatch.

Payne and other supporters of the initiative believe that the state’s earlier acceptance of medicinal cannabis and the subsequent launch of this program bode well for its opportunities this November.

In 2018, a large majority of Missouri voters approved an initiative that legalized medical marijuana for qualified patients.

“Missourians now have confidence in our state government’s ability to operate a new department of state government that would regulate marijuana,” Legal Missouri says on its website. “The Department of Health and Elderly Services has effectively administered the new program and met all of the guidelines of the Missouri Constitution.”

In addition to legalizing adult-use marijuana and establishing the framework for a regulated market, the initiative would also extend the “length of time that patient and caregiver medical marijuana cards are valid for medical marijuana from one to three years, while keeping costs down (January 25, 2019). U.S. dollar). ‘ according to Legal Missouri’s website. It would also cut the $100 fee for patients who grow their own cannabis by 50%.