Nebraska Officials Claim Fraud and Malfeasance on Medical Cannabis Petitions

Nebraska officials are questioning the validity of more than half of the already-validated signatures on each of the state’s two petitions to legalize medical cannabis, the Nebraska Examiner reports. A legal brief filed last week by state Attorney General Mike Hilgers on behalf of Secretary of State Bob Evnen contends that an ongoing investigation “casts serious doubt” on about 49,000 signatures on the petitions.  

“In the aggregate, the petition circulator fraud and notary malfeasance described taints – strips the presumption of validity – from tens of thousands of submitted signatures submitted by the Sponsors.” — Hilgers, in the brief, via the Examiner 

In the filing, Hilgers and Evnen are asking the courts to determine the number of “valid” signatures and void the election results if there are not enough validated signatures. 

In a statement, Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana, the group behind the petitions, said “It is appalling that the State of Nebraska is working to silence and disenfranchise the voices of tens of thousands of Nebraskans based on primarily unsubstantiated technical issues.”  

“These issues have absolutely nothing to do with the more than 115,000 voters who signed each of these petitions,” the statement said, “or the dedicated patients and Nebraska citizens who worked hard to get the issue on the ballot.”     

The filing alleges fraud or malfeasance in petitions circulated in 72 of the state’s 93 counties, claiming three notaries served as both circulator and notary on an undisclosed number of petitions and that at least six notaries validated petitions outside the presence of the circulator who gathered the signatures.