On March 10, proponents of a Maine initiative to legalize marijuana filed a lawsuit over whether their initiative has enough valid signatures. The law requires 61,123 signatures. Proponents submitted 99,229. The Secretary of State determined that only 51,543 signatures are valid. If the Secretary is correct, the petition had a validity rate of only 51.9%, despite the fact that a very large proportion of Maine adult residents are registered to vote.

The lawsuit is Birks v Dunlap, Kennebec County Superior Court. It charges that the Secretary of State invalidated all the work of certain notaries public, on the grounds that he didn’t believe the signatures of the notaries on the petition are similar to the signatures on their voter registration forms. Ironically, some of the notarizes signed various petitions, and their signatures as voters were not invalidated. Here is the Complaint.