A significant legal challenge to the ballot measures seeking to legalize medical marijuana in Nebraska won’t be resolved before Election Day, a state judge acknowledged.
Two voter initiatives that would legalize medical cannabis in the state and lay the foundation for a regulated industry have been certified for the state ballot despite accusations from state officials that at least some signatures qualifying the measures for the ballot were obtained fraudulently.
State officials will have to show proof at an Oct. 29 trial that a “significant number of signatures” were fraudulently obtained, Lancaster County Judge Susan Strong said during an Oct. 11 hearing, according to the Lincoln Journal Star.
That all but guarantees the matter won’t be resolved before the Nov. 5 election, Strong said, according to the newspaper.
“I don’t know if we can help that at this point because the timeline is already extremely tight,” she said.
Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana are disputing the accusations made by former state Sen. John Kuehn in a Sept. 12 lawsuit, filed the day before Secretary of State Bob Evnen certified the medical cannabis measures for the ballot.
Kuehn’s suit claimed in part that “numerous signatures” should be invalidated – accusations bolstered by criminal charges brought Sept. 13 against a paid petition gatherer for allegedly faking signatures from voters whose names he found in a phone book.
That prompted a separate challenge from Evnen and Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers, who told a judge earlier this month that “tens of thousands” of signatures are potentially “tainted.”
Roughly 49,000 of the 115,000 signatures are questionable, according to legal filings obtained by the Nebraska Examiner.
