LINCOLN, Neb. (WOWT) – With just seven days before Election Day, one of Nebraska’s ballot measures is on trial.
Lancaster County District Court Judge Susan Strong is being asked to throw out what the Secretary of State already approved: putting medical cannabis on the ballot.
Opening arguments got underway Tuesday in the over Nebraska’s medical marijuana petitions.
Nebraskans are already voting on Initiatives 437 and 438. If passed by voters next week, one would legalize medical marijuana and the other would regulate it.
The civil lawsuit in Courtroom 32 is over signatures. Ever since one signature collector in Grand Island allegedly said he pulled some names from a phone book, the plaintiff wants to call into question all the signatures.
“This is not an attack on the initiative process. It‘s not about policy. It’s about following the rules,” attorney Anne Mackin, who spoke first on Tuesday morning. She represents the plaintiff in the case, former Nebraska State Sen. John Kuehn.
Election Day is next Tuesday, Nov. 5. Early voting started Oct. 7.
“These measures are going to be voted on. Early voting is underway. We are asking the court to press pause,” Mackin said.
Attorneys for Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen say the case is simply about following the rules.
“We‘re here to defend the process,” Vigilanco said. “Cheating is a choice. We’re going to prove that a number of signature collectors and notaries made that choice here.”
The state says the evidence allegedly impacts petitions collected in at least 71 of Nebraska’s 93 counties, and accuses seven notaries and three petition-gatherers. Nearly 100,000 signatures between two petitions gathered by Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana are under scrutiny.
The state’s attorneys have said that Evnen stands by the work done during the petition certification process. Evnen has also said publicly that he’s not going to take unilateral actions like walking back the certification. Instead, the state is asking the court to say whether there are a sufficient number of signatures for the initiatives to legally appear on the ballot.
Viglianco has said in previous proceedings that “serious and significant tangible evidence of fraud” has been uncovered in the investigation, noting that two people have been officially charged.
Hall County Election Commissioner Tracy Overstreet, along with other election officials, have been subpoenaed to testify in this trial.
But attorney Sydney Hayes, speaking Tuesday on behalf of the ballot sponsors, said that the evidence doesn’t support numbers of that significance.
“They do not have direct evidence to get them to the point of invalidating 3,463 signatures. Thousands of voters are being punished for notary errors,” Hayes said. “The only way they win this case is by imputing notary errors from a few documents to invalidate tens of thousands of other signatures by Nebraska voters — punishing voters for something they had nothing to do with.”
Hayes also pointed out that the approach used by the plaintiffs have “never been applied in Nebraska or in any other state.”
During a pretrial proceeding earlier this month, attorney Daniel Gutman said that Evnen himself would be the one to provide the remedy in this case.
“Secretary of State Bob Evnen is essentially suing himself,” he said.
The judge has previously impressed on the plaintif they must prove the petitions included many signatures that were wrongly obtained — and that intentional fraud was committed, not just clerical errors. If they can’t, then the case stops there.
If they do, then it falls to the defendants to prove they obtained enough legal signatures to rightly put the matter on Nebraska’s November ballot, she has said.
Judge Strong has also said the trial could move into a second phase, which would likely be held after the election.
—
This is a developing story. Stay with 6 News for updates.
Read the documents
—
Digital Director Gina Dvorak and KSNB Local4 contributed to this story.
—
Get the latest breaking news updates delivered to your inbox. Sign up for 6 News email alerts.
Copyright 2024 WOWT. All rights reserved.
Opening arguments got underway Tuesday in the trial over Nebraska’s medical marijuana petitions. Read More