Medical Marijuana on Arizona Ballot

[kindgreenbuds]

by Kevin Kiley, Alia Beard Rau and Mary Jo Pitzl - Jul. 2, 2010 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

In November, voters will decide a variety of issues - from allowing renaming the state's No. 2 office to prohibiting affirmative-action programs.

As of Thursday's filing deadline, nine measures qualified for the Nov. 2 general-election ballot. But only one initiative - an effort to legalize medical marijuana - qualified for through a citizen petition.

The other eight measures were referred to the ballot by the Legislature.

Organizers and observers attribute the low number of citizen-driven initiatives to the lagging economy, which they say made it difficult for groups to hire companies to gather signatures and get the word out about their petitions.

"Most of the groups that would be doing initiatives have to be more selective in a tight economy," said Sandy Bahr, a lobbyist with the Sierra Club. "It takes a lot of money. You have to really run two campaigns, one campaign to get it on the ballot and then you have to campaign to win."

She said some groups that would traditionally run campaigns, such as the National Rifle Association, had the legislature refer measures to the voters instead or bypass the public altogether when possible, removing the costly petition-gathering phase.

Shawn Dow, who organized an unsuccessful initiative effort to ban photo-enforcement devices, said his group fell short because they couldn't pay signature gatherers.

"It's impossible for an all-volunteer organization to get something on the ballot," he said.

For this election, initiatives needed to submit 153,365 signatures to qualify.

Past elections have seen much higher numbers citizen initiatives. In 2006, Arizona was the busiest state in the country with 19 measures, including 10 initiatives. In 2008, there were 10 ballot measures and nine voter initiatives.

Political observers said the nine ballot measures, while an interesting and diverse group, are not the type of propositions to generate large campaigns and will likely be overshadowed by statewide races.

"These are not big business issues," said Gibson McKay, a lobbyist and political consultant who has worked with several ballot proposition campaigns. "When you have the liquor interest, or gaming initiatives, those will turn people out to the polls because people are paying millions and millions of dollars to make sure of that."

Three prominent signature drives - to repeal the state's controversial new immigration law, to restructure the property tax system and to eliminate photo-enforcement traffic devices - failed to collect enough signatures.

One measure placed by the state Legislature, which would have guaranteed a secret ballot in state-run and union elections, was taken off the ballot Wednesday. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Robert Oberbillig ruled that the measure violated a constitutional provision that requires parts of an initiative to be substantively related.

Lawyers in support of the proposition said they would appeal the judge's ruling to the Arizona Supreme Court, which could decide before the election whether or not to keep the measure on the ballot.

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/a...z0sb574CeR

[amasseur]

Anyone besides me in AZ voting for this? Make sure you have all of your friends and family vote for this!!!