Legal Missouri campaign asserts it can find valid signatures to overcome shortfall and put measure on November ballot
An initiative to legalize recreational marijuana use in Missouri will need help if it is going to be on the November ballot.
Reports from almost every county in the state, delivered to Secretary of State John Ashcroft’s office, show the petition is short of its goal in two of the six congressional districts needed to qualify for the ballot.
It is 1,573 signatures short in the 6th Congressional District, which runs from Kansas City to the Iowa border, and 1,144 signatures short in the 7th Congressional District in southwest Missouri around Springfield and Joplin.
The same reports show that a proposal to bring ranked-choice voting to Missouri failed to obtain the necessary signatures in any congressional district.
The figures are unofficial and subject to amendment until the final Aug. 9 deadline for Ashcroft to determine whether the campaign succeeded or not, spokeswoman Madison Walker wrote in an email to The Independent.
Legal Missouri 2022, which pushed the ballot measure with a $5.9 million campaign effort, wasn’t ready Tuesday to admit the effort was finished. John Payne, Legal Missouri’s campaign manager, said the reports of local election authorities are being double checked to identify possible errors.
Roughly 400,000 signatures were submitted for the petition to legalize adult use of marijuana and automatically expunge most nonviolent past cannabis offenses, he said. [Read More @ Missouri Independent]
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