LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) — The fight to legalize medical marijuana continues in Nebraska, with the state’s highest court hearing arguments about the validity of signatures on two ballot measures from last fall.
Kuehn v. Evnen challenges whether Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana had enough valid signatures to be on the ballot.
Former state Sen. John Kuehn, with help from Secretary of State Bob Evnen and Attorney General Mike Hilgers who later joined the lawsuit, believes tens of thousands of signatures required to get those initiatives on the ballot are invalid, alleging fraud by the circulators and improper notarization.
A lower court disagreed.
“When there are bad acts related to the affidavit, according to (Barkley v. Pool), the value of the verification is destroyed and the petition must fall unless the genuineness of the signature is affirmatively shown,“ said Andrew La Grone, an attorney for the appellant.
Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana said in a statement Wednesday, “People don’t try this hard to destroy something that doesn’t matter.”
“The appellants only win this case by invalidating signatures, and they can only invalidate enough signatures to make a difference if the court adopts a false-one, false-all maxim that no other court in the country has adopted,” said Daniel Gutman, an attorney for the appellee.
Attorneys for the state said because several hundred signatures were found to be fraudulent — something the petitioners didn’t deny — the credibility of those collecting signatures is damaged.
“Allowing the district court’s opinion to stand would allow merely two bad actors to fraudulently place any measure on the ballot so long as they both invoke the Fifth Amendment,” La Grone said.
If the court rules in the state’s favor, it could invalidate tens of thousands of signatures, putting the initiatives well below the constitutional threshold to be on the ballot and upending the work done to get medical marijuana to patients.
“The mass invalidation of petition signatures is inconsistent with the high value that this court places on the initiative right,” Gutman said. “It is inconsistent with the Election Act, which facilitates, not undermines, the initiative process. And it is inconsistent with common sense.”
The court also may rule Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana must again prove the already-validated signatures are valid.
The state also said if the small number of fraudulent signatures aren’t enough to warrant a closer look, then likely ”the public’s confidence and the precious power of initiative may be shaken.”
Gutman argued the petitioners can’t do better than the state’s election officials already did in verifying signatures.
The court is expected to make its decision in the next few weeks.
