Michigan rec marijuana campaign submits signatures

A campaign to legalize recreational marijuana in Michigan has submitted roughly 100,000 more signatures than needed to qualify for the ballot, fueling optimism that voters will get to decide the issue this November.

Jeffrey Hank, chair of MILegalize, said in an email Wednesday that the campaign turned in to the secretary of state’s office about 354,000 signatures in support of the initiative. The threshold for making the ballot is 252,523 signatures of registered voters.

But having a buffer of extra signatures is a virtual necessity, as many will ultimately be thrown out.

The adult-use campaign in Maine nearly didn’t make the 2016 ballot after that state’s top election official initially deemed tens of thousands of petition signatures invalid.

If Michigan certifies the initiative to go before voters, the state will become the latest to have a marijuana-related ballot question this year.

Others that have already qualified include medical cannabis in Florida and recreational in Maine and Nevada.

Other pro-marijuana campaigns are still either gathering signatures or waiting to find out if they qualified for the ballot in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Massachusetts and Missouri.