petition

Enough petition signatures have been verified to place an initiative seeking to legalize marijuana on the ballot this summer in Alaska, election officials said Tuesday.

The petition has met all the thresholds necessary to appear on the Aug. 19 primary ballot, the Alaska Division of Elections said.

The lieutenant governor’s office said it had verified the signatures from registered voters as of Monday evening. The total of 31,500 was a thousand more than needed, with about 6,000 signatures remaining to be checked.

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Changing to a part-time Legislature in Michigan could appear on the November ballot if a group supporting the issue is able to gather about 400,000 signatures by July 7.

The Committee to Restore a Part-Time Legislature submitted petition language to the state Board of Canvassers last week to transform the Legislature from full-time to part-time status. The board will take up the petition Thursday

Under the proposal, the Legislature would meet for 60 days and the pay for lawmakers would be reduced from $71,685 to $35,000 a year.

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In an expected move, one of the groups supporting an arena ballot measure says it’s planning to sue the city of Sacramento after the city clerk rejected a ballot measure for inconsistencies, according to KCRA-TV Channel 3.

The organizers of Sacramento Taxpayers Opposed to Pork are waiting to look at material from the city clerk before launching a legal challenge, according to KCRA.

On Friday, the clerk rejected the ballot measure for things such as inconsistent dates, missing language in some versions of petitions, some lacking required wording and not including the names and signatures of proponents.

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A sharply divided Florida Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for voters to decide this fall whether Florida will join 20 other states in allowing the use of medical marijuana.

The 4-3 decision upheld the ballot language for the constitutional amendment, rejecting arguments from Attorney General Pam Bondi, legislative leaders and law enforcement officials who contended the proposal was misleading and, if approved by 60 percent of the voters, would lead to widespread marijuana use in the state.

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Shirley Concolino, Sacramento’s City Clerk, announced last Friday that she was disqualifying the petition filed with her office containing more than 40,000 signatures to put a proposed new arena for the Sacramento Kings to a public vote this June.  The arena is to be partially funded through a taxpayer subsidy, which the group known as STOP (Sacramento Taxpayers Opposed to Pork) opposes and seeks to petition to the ballot.

ABC News 10 reports that the city clerk invalidated petitions based on various “election code violations,” though mostly technical mistakes, including a missing notice of intent on some petitions and faulty dates on others.

The secretary of state’s office said Thursday it’s cleared the way for three proposed constitutional amendments to appear on the November ballot, despite questions about who has the authority to prepare the measures’ language under a new law.

Martha Adcock, general counsel for Secretary of State Mark Martin’s office, told lawmakers that the office decided to use language provided by the attorney general’s office and from legislation approved last year to prepare the proposals for the November ballot. A new law took away the attorney general’s authority to prepare the measures’ “popular names” that appear on the ballot.

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Bernalillo County Treasurer Manny Ortiz faced two hours of stern questioning when he took the stand during his recall hearing Thursday.

But he had some good news afterward: The county’s Legal Department and Elections Bureau say it would take 82,436 signatures to force Ortiz into a recall election, far more than his opponents had expected.

The treasurer’s testimony came in a hearing before state District Judge Alan Malott.

Opponents of Ortiz are asking Malott to allow them to start the signature-gathering required to trigger a recall election. They’re trying to show “probable cause” that Ortiz committed malfeasance or misfeasance in office.

Supporters of an independently elected Portland Public Water District filed 50,213 voter signatures with the City Auditor’s Office on Tuesday morning.

They need around 30,000 valid signatures to place their initiative measure on the May Primary Election ballot. The verification process could take several weeks.

“We are confident we are going to make it,” said Kent Craford, a former lobbyist and chief co-petitioner.

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A man is facing charges of forging signatures on petitions asking for the recall of Colorado Sen. John Morse.

The District Attorney’s Office said Thursday an arrest warrant has been issued for Nickolas Robinson. He’s accused of forging at least 13 signatures on recall petitions. Robinson could not be located for comment on Friday.

According to KKTV-TV (http://tinyurl.com/o3pybso), the warrant alleges that Robinson committed 13 counts of forgery, seven counts of perjury and 13 counts of attempt to influence a public servant last May.

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Since 2011, the San Diego City Council has faced three referendums challenging its decisions. Another is out for signature. The most recent one, having to do with the Barrio Logan land use plan, has generated frustration among those supporting the council decision. Calling the referendum process undemocratic, a group opposing the referendum filed a lawsuit seeking to stop it. They lost twice.

There is nothing about which to be frustrated. The use of referendums to challenge legislative decisions is legal and has deep roots in democracy. There is nothing undemocratic about leaving decisions to San Diego voters, which is all a referendum does. It is a constitutional right in California.

The proponents of a statewide pension reform initiative are crying foul at the ballot summary prepared for their proposed constitutional amendment by Attorney General Kamala Harris.  San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed called the language “inaccurate” and “pejorative” and “a bit of a problem.”

“You read this and you don’t know what we’re trying to do,” Reed added. The first sentence of the AG’s summary was most problematic according to Reed. It reads: “Eliminates constitutional protections for vested pension and retiree healthcare benefits for current public employees, including teachers, nurses, and peace officers, for future work performed.”

A controversial campaign to reform California’s public pensions faces an uncertain future after the state attorney general chose what the measure’s backers consider to be unfriendly language for their proposed ballot initiative.

Chuck Reed, the mayor of San Jose and the driving force behind the proposal, told Reuters on Tuesday he will confer with supporters on whether to press ahead with trying to get the overhaul before voters later this year, and he might sue over Attorney General Kamala Harris’ wording for the ballot. A decision should be made by the end of January, Reed said.

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A California judge has ruled in favor of validating thousands of signatures on a pro-family petition challenging that state’s new transgender law.

The controversial law gives transgender students special rights, letting them use bathrooms and locker rooms of the opposite gender.

California’s secretary of state had tried to block the signatures from being counted in a referendum because they were not accepted by the court on time.

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More than 35,000 people willingly signed on to an effort by STOP to put city plans for a new Kings arena to a public vote but now, almost a month since those names were turned in to the city clerk, pro-arena groups are taking issue with what version of the petition voters signed.

“Voters are not getting the same pieces of information,” Chris Lehane, consultant with The4000, said Monday. ”Some dates are all over the place. Others don’t include consistent language in the notice of intent.  That’s the reason why they’re pursuing this.”

With a letter hand-delivered to the county registrar late Friday, The4000 is claiming that there are at least five versions of the petition circulated by STOP.

The path to a new downtown arena isn’t set in stone yet, with one of the biggest obstacles remaining being a campaign to put the arena on the ballot.  That campaign is being pushed by Sacramento Taxpayers Opposed to Pork, otherwise known as STOP.

STOP submitted about 35,000 signatures to the county a couple weeks ago for validation and they need about 22,000 to get the measure approved.

However, new reports have surfaced today that indicate those signatures may be invalid.

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