Cannabis reform activists in Missouri have managed to get their legalization bill on the November ballot after being bogged down by setbacks and nearly forced to give up on their bill. According to unofficial tallies, the Legal Missouri campaign had not collected enough signatures to qualify for the upcoming ballot by late July, being 2,275 signatures short. With the ballot fast approaching, many feared the campaign’s hope of gathering enough signatures in time would be dashed.
But activists behind the campaign managed to pull a major comeback, collecting the remaining 2,275 signatures by Aug. 9, 2022, and qualifying the legalization initiative for the upcoming ballot.
Missouri officials announced in early August that the Legal Missouri campaign had collected the required number of signatures and that the organization’s cannabis legalization measure would appear on Missouri’s November ballot.
Speaking at a press conference, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft urged Missouri residents to educate themselves on ballot initiatives, including Initiative 2022-59, which he called “particularly lengthy.”
Before the Legal Missouri campaign managed to cover the deficit of signatures, it asked Ashcroft’s office to do an internal review of the signatures it had submitted, even providing the office with a list of signatures it believed had been disqualified incorrectly. Even though state law required that the campaign take its grievances to the court, this surprise maneuver worked, a feat that shocked even veterans who have been in the initiative petition game for years.
Attorney Chuck Hartfield said he has never seen an instance where such corrections were made outside of the court process in his years of representing initiative petition campaigns.
In May, the campaign had submitted around 400,000 signatures for its cannabis legalization initiative, and state law required that they achieve a signature threshold in at least six of Missouri’s eight congressional districts. Early reporting indicated that the campaign was falling behind in two congressional districts, with the campaign stating at the time that it was checking the results from officials for errors and that it was confident the initiative would qualify.
In a press release in early August, Legal Missouri 2022 campaign manager John Payne said that volunteers collected 100,000 signatures on top of those obtained by paid signature collectors, showing that there is plenty of grassroots support among Missouri residents who would like to legalize cannabis in the state. He said that if the signatures had not been reviewed, Missourians wouldn’t have had the chance to vote on cannabis legalization on the upcoming ballot, potentially making Missouri the 20th state to legalize recreational cannabis.
The resilience displayed by the advocates to ensure that the ballot initiative qualifies for the November polls exemplifies how the entire marijuana industry and its actors, such as American Cannabis Partners, go to great lengths to make progress despite insurmountable odds.
NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to American Cannabis Partners are available in the company’s newsroom at https://cnw.fm/ACP
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