Major ‘shortfalls’ thwart Idaho medical cannabis legalization push

Idaho will remain one of the handful of states without any form of legal cannabis access after a medical marijuana legalization campaign failed to qualify for the November ballot amid what state elections officials called major “shortfalls.”

Backers of a proposed Idaho Medical Cannabis Act claimed to have collected more than 100,000 signatures from registered voters ahead of an April 30 deadline. But after reportedly spending more than $2 million, state elections officials said Tuesday the campaign was more than 12,000 signatures short.

“The Idaho Medical Cannabis Act initiative did not qualify for the November ballot after failing to submit the required number of valid petition signatures, both in total number of signatures and required legislative districts,” Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane said in a press release Tuesday.

In a separate letter to backers, McGrane said that the campaign gathered “no more than 58,024 county-certified signatures” and collected a necessary amount of signatures in only 13 out of 18 required statewide legislative districts.

Will Idaho legalize medical marijuana?

It’s only the latest in a string of setbacks for cannabis reform in Idaho, where state laws are so strict that even hemp-derived THC, still technically legal under the 2018 Farm Bill before a November redefinition of hemp goes into effect, is illegal.

Every effort to legalize cannabis in Idaho, stretching back more than a decade, has failed, the Idaho Capital Sun reported.

To qualify for the ballot, organizers needed to have gathered valid signatures from 6% of registered voters statewide as well as 6% of voters in at least 18 of the state’s 35 legislative districts.

But a few weeks ago, a state judge ruled that thousands of signatures were submitted too late to count, despite legalization backers’ attempt to force the issue via a lawsuit.

And according to a copy of a letter from McCrane to Idaho Medical Cannabis Act backer Jeremy Chou obtained by MJBizDaily, backers submitted “no more than 58,024 county-certified signatures.”

McCrane’s letter adds that the state “received numerous complaints regarding the petition process” that were “communicated” to the campaign.

Why did Idaho medical cannabis legalization fail?

Among those problems, according to McCrane’s letter:

• State law requires signature gatherers to be Idaho residents, and election officials could not verify 293 gatherers’ residencies.
• Petition packets did not contain state-mandated warning language advising would-be signers of felony charges for anyone signing a petition twice or signing when “not a qualified elector.”
• An alleged instance in which a petition contained the name of a deceased person. That matter was referred to the Idaho State Police, McGrane’s letter said.
• A total of 175 paid signature-gatherers “who were not properly identified” in campaign finance reports, creating a separate “compliance issue,” the letter said.

Idaho is one of several red states to have tightened rules around voter initiatives. Critics say such rules create significant difficulties for ballot questions by design.

Another prominent example is Florida, where state law enforcement went as far as to arrest paid signature gatherers for a marijuana multistate operator-funded adult-use legalization effort.

New medical cannabis markets recently opened in Kentucky and in Alabama, while a cultivator in Nebraska was recently cleared to plant the first medical cannabis crop.

However, adult-use legalization appears to be at a standstill after Florida’s failure. Legislation in Pennsylvania remains bottled up.