Medical Marijuana Backers Want Measure On Ballot Despite Fraud
Despite the fact that their measure lost thousands of signatures to fraudulent activities perpetrated by 10 NDSU football players (among others), and despite the fact that it appears as though the organizers of the measure may eventually face charges themselves over illegal petitioning, the backers of a measure to make medicinal marijuana legal want it on the ballot anyway.
The measure committee is alleging that Secretary of State Al Jaeger didn’t do a line-by-line verification of all signatures, choosing instead to throw out all of the signatures on a petition shown to have fraudulent signatures on it.
The reason for this? Not even the petition circulators themselves, who are facing charges for this fraud, could tell investigators which signatures were valid and which were not. And besides, when petition circulators fraudulently signed the affidavit at the bottom of the petitions swearing that the signatures on that petition were accurate they called into question the validity of the entire document.
The signatures were thrown out properly. Not only that, but requiring that the issue be put back on the ballot despite the fraud would not only be a disservice to those initiated measure committees who gather their signatures in a legal manner consistent with the rules, it would also throw the ballot printing process into chaos and delay the shipment of ballots to North Dakotans serving in the military overseas, among others.
The medicinal marijuana folks have done enough to cast themselves in a poor light with the petition fraud. Even if they manage to get their issue on the ballot North Dakotans will likely reject it for no other reason than resentment over the damage done to the political process.
Tags: medicinal marijuana, North Dakota News
