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LINCOLN — Nebraska’s chief election official and top prosecutor have questioned the validity of more than half of the signatures already validated on each of the state’s two medical cannabis petitions for the November election.
Attorney General Mike Hilgers, in a legal filing Friday on behalf of Secretary of State Bob Evnen, told a Lancaster County District Court judge that an ongoing investigation “casts serious doubt regarding the ultimate validity of approximately 49,000 signatures” on two medical cannabis petitions.
“In the aggregate, the petition circulator fraud and notary malfeasance described taints — strips the presumption of validity — from tens of thousands of submitted signatures submitted by the Sponsors,” Hilgers wrote.
Early voting has already begun on whether to regulate and legalize the drug for medical purposes. Hilgers and Evnen are asking the court to determine the true number of “valid” signatures and void the election results if there aren’t enough.
Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana said in a statement: “It is appalling that the State of Nebraska is working to silence and disenfranchise the voices of tens of thousands of Nebraskans based on primarily unsubstantiated technical issues.”
The statement continued: “These issues have absolutely nothing to do with the more than 115,000 voters who signed each of these petitions, or the dedicated patients and Nebraska citizens who worked hard to get the issue on the ballot.”
The filing alleges that fraud or malfeasance has been uncovered in petitions circulated in 72 of the state’s 93 counties. That includes Hall County, where a paid petition circulator from Grand Island and a notary from York have been criminally charged for alleged wrongdoing on the petitions.
Some of the new examples Hilgers’ office alleges are that three notaries served as both notary and circulator on an undisclosed number of petitions and that at least six notaries notarized petitions outside the presence of the circulator who gathered the signatures.
