Idaho will not get to vote on legalizing medical marijuana in the upcoming election.
On Tuesday, the Secretary of State announced the Idaho Medical Cannabis Act Initiative did not meet the legal requirements to make it onto the November ballot.
In a letter sent Monday to the Natural Medicine Alliance of Idaho - the organization behind the petition - the Secretary of State wrote the campaign fell short on several fronts.
To go through, an initiative must be signed by 6% of qualified electors or about 70,000 people, coming from 18 of the state’s 35 legislative districts. The organizers gathered roughly 58,000 signatures from just 13 districts.
Secretary Phil McGrane said his office has referred other issues to law enforcement: one signature was linked to someone who died in 2021, while other names belonged to records that had been removed from voter rolls.
The office also found discrepancies in financial disclosures and paperwork filing. While signatures must be gathered by Idaho residents, the residency of 293 circulators could not be verified, the letter said.
“The statewide and legislative-district signature deficiencies alone require the Office to refuse final filing,” McGrane wrote, “The additional issues are cumulative, not alternative means of qualification.”
In an emailed statement, the NMAI said it oversaw the campaign in good faith and will cooperate with any review.
“We hired a professional signature gathering firm to do what we could not do ourselves and trusted it to do the job lawfully and completely,” the statement reads, adding organizers were not experienced in petition drives but believed in the rigor of Idaho law and the demands of the ballot initiative process.
“The Natural Medicine Alliance of Idaho was created because we believe patients with serious and painful conditions deserve an alternative to prescription opioids,” the organization wrote.
“Idahoans deserve the right to make their own healthcare decisions and a government that trusts them to do so.”
Campaign finance records show the group spent $2.7 million to try to get the issue on the ballot.
