On April 8, a Maine state court made it very likely that an initiative to legalize marijuana will be on the November 2016 ballot. Proponents needed 61,123 valid signatures and submitted 99,229 raw signatures. Last month the Secretary of State had ruled that 31,338 signatures are invalid because the signature of the Notary Public who notarized those sheets doesn’t resemble that Notary’s signature on file with the state (the state, of course, has a list of all notaries and that list includes the signature of the notary).

The decision is 26 pages long. Birks v Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, Portland Business and Consumer Court, BCD-AP-16-04. State law says the Notary’s signature must be “in the same form as indicated on the notary public’s commission.” The decision says if that law is interpreted to mean that the notary’s signature on petition sheets must closely resemble the notary’s signature on the commission, then it would be unconstitutional. The decision interprets the state law not to mean what the Secretary of State felt it meant. The decision explains why individuals frequently sign their names under difficult conditions and it is not reasonable to expect that the signature of an individual always looks the same. Thanks to Walker Chandler for this news.