The State Board of Election Commissioners on Wednesday blocked a proposal to legalize leisure marijuana from showing on Arkansas’ poll this fall.
The panel rejected the favored identify and poll title for the proposed constitutional modification that supporters hoped to placed on the November poll. Supporters submitted greater than sufficient legitimate signatures from registered voters to qualify, however the proposal nonetheless wanted approval from by the board to seem on the poll.
Arkansas voters in 2016 authorised a constitutional modification legalizing medical marijuana. The proposed modification would permit individuals age 21 and older to own as much as an oz. of hashish and would permit state-licensed dispensaries to promote leisure marijuana.
An lawyer for Responsible Growth Arkansas, the group backing the proposal, stated it could attraction to the state Supreme Court.
The panel rejected the measure after commissioners stated they did not imagine the poll title absolutely defined to voters the impression of the modification. For instance, commissioners stated they had been involved that the modification would repeal the state’s present restrict below its medical marijuana modification on how a lot THC is allowed in edible marijuana merchandise.
“If I’m a voter I is perhaps all for this however I’d prefer to safeguard that edible restrict,” Commissioner J. Harmon Smith said.
Responsible Growth Arkansas attorney Steve Lancaster said the the board’s criticism was unfair because it would require the ballot title going into an unwieldy amount of detail.
“The type of detail that the board expected, or demanded in this case, would make our ballot title thousands and thousands of words long,” Steve Lancaster told reporters after the vote. “That just simply is not workable for a ballot.”
Recreational marijuana is already authorized in 19 states, and legalization proposals are on the poll this fall in South Dakota and Maryland. Supporters are additionally attempting to get measures on the poll in Missouri, North Dakota and Oklahoma.
Arkansas Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who’s a former head of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, opposed the proposal. Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Chris Jones stated Wednesday that he helps the measure. Republican nominee Sarah Sanders has not stated the place she stands on the problem. Hutchinson is term-limited and never searching for reelection in November.
The board additionally rejected a proposal that may cut back a on line casino playing measure voters authorised in 2018 by eradicating one of many 4 counties the place a on line casino is allowed.
