On March 21, supporters of a Utah initiative filed a lawsuit in state court in Salt Lake County, arguing that their initiative should be put on the ballot. It has obtained 120,000 signatures, all collected between August 2009 and August 2010. Utah law says initiative proponents have one year to collect the signatures. But the state says the initiative is invalid.

The proponents collected the bulk of their signatures by the late spring of 2010, and turned them in, hoping the initiative would have enough valid signatures to be on the November 2010 ballot. The petition didn’t have enough, so the proponents returned to the streets and gathered many more, and now desire to have the initiative placed on the November 2012 ballot. But, the state says that signatures from the two petitioning periods can’t be combined. See this story. The initiative would provide for tougher ethics rules for state legislators. The case is Utahns for Ethical Government v The Clerks of all counties in Utah, cv 1109-06734. Thanks to Ballot Box News for this news.