Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana submitted more than 90,000 signatures to the Secretary of State’s office on Thursday to put a pair of initiatives legalizing cannabis for medical use before voters in November.
The campaign said it surpassed the 87,000 names it estimated it would need to qualify for the ballot, said Lincoln Sen. Anna Wishart, a co-sponsor of the petitions, but the fate of the initiatives in 2022 remains in question.
“There’s no campaign in the history of the state of Nebraska who has turned in, on a total grassroots basis, this number of signatures,” Wishart said on Thursday. “But we’ve had a lot of challenges against us.”
After falling victim to a court challenge in 2020, the campaign lost two major donors this year, forcing Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana to launch a grassroots effort relying predominantly on volunteers to scour the state asking for registered voters to add their names to the petition.
In response to a federal lawsuit filed by the campaign’s coordinator alleging that Nebraska’s requirement that proposed ballot measures have the support of 5% of voters in 38 of its 93 counties was unconstitutional, a federal judge issued a temporary injunction in June, paving the way for the medical marijuana petitions to make it to the ballot by meeting the 87,000 signature threshold alone.
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