{"id":78706,"date":"2024-10-30T08:44:35","date_gmt":"2024-10-30T16:44:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2024\/10\/30\/court-trial-over-nebraskas-medical-marijuana-ballot-signatures-begins\/"},"modified":"2024-10-30T19:46:13","modified_gmt":"2024-10-31T03:46:13","slug":"court-trial-over-nebraskas-medical-marijuana-ballot-signatures-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2024\/10\/30\/court-trial-over-nebraskas-medical-marijuana-ballot-signatures-begins\/","title":{"rendered":"Court Trial Over Nebraska\u2019s Medical Marijuana Ballot Signatures Begins"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are not isolated incidents. This is large, large-scale, known malfeasance by key campaign workers.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

By Zach Wendling, Nebraska Examiner<\/strong><\/p>\n

The trial over Nebraska\u2019s two medical cannabis ballot measures began Tuesday with a broad examination into notary publics, citizen-led initiatives and the different groups that have reviewed the petition signatures.<\/p>\n

The case in Lancaster County District Court involves two petitions from the Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana campaign that would legalize and regulate medical cannabis. Both petitions remain on the November 5 ballot, but if this week\u2019s legal challenges are successful, that could invalidate the election results. The trial picks back up Thursday.<\/p>\n

The medical marijuana campaign needs 86,499 valid signatures. Nearly 90,000 signatures were verified on each petition.<\/p>\n

\u2018Cheating is a choice\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Attorneys for John Kuehn, a former Republican state senator and former State Board of Health member who filed the September 12 lawsuit, and Secretary of State Bob Evnen (R), a defendant in the lawsuit, sought to frame the case around one question: \u201cFollowing the rules.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anne Mackin, an Austin-based attorney and one of Kuehn\u2019s lead attorneys, said the question is whether the campaign garnered enough signatures, and said she is being aided by an \u201cunbiased third-party firm\u201d that Kuehn hired to review the signatures. She said the firm found suspicious behavior involving the petition drive.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are not isolated incidents. This is large, large-scale, known malfeasance by key campaign workers,\u201d Mackin said. \u201cIt\u2019s a larger scale than my client ever could have imagined when initially filing this lawsuit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mackin is a former Texas assistant attorney general who worked as legal counsel for the Texas Senate and Federal Election Commission.<\/p>\n

Deputy Solicitor General Zach Viglianco in the Nebraska Attorney General\u2019s Office, who is defending Evnen, said during opening arguments that \u201ccheating is a choice.\u201d He accused the ballot sponsors and a significant number of campaign circulators and notaries public of cheating Nebraskans.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe choice those individuals made is an unfortunate one,\u201d Viglianco said. \u201cBut it\u2019s not a choice that can be ignored.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pursuit of the \u2018magic number\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sydney Hayes, an attorney for the ballot sponsors, said the goal of the opposing attorneys is to find enough questionable signatures to invalidate both petitions.<\/p>\n

Hayes told Lancaster County District Judge Susan Strong that there isn\u2019t enough evidence of \u201cfraud\u201d or mistakes, noting\u00a0at most 706 questionable signatures on one petition and 394 signatures on the other.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey simply can\u2019t meet the numbers,\u201d Hayes said. \u201cIn fact, they don\u2019t even come close.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Nebraska Attorney General\u2019s Office and Kuehn\u2019s attorneys are focusing on the behavior of certain notaries, Hayes said, seeking to invalidate any signatures that they touched.<\/p>\n

Hayes said invalidating that many signatures is \u201cquite simply\u201d not the law. She and Daniel Gutman, another ballot sponsor attorney, have argued no court nationwide has ever accepted<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Signature validation and notaries<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wayne Bena, deputy secretary of state for elections, testified that local county officials verify signatures by matching at least two of three identifying details\u2014printed names, birth dates or home addresses\u2014to a voter\u2019s registration file.<\/p>\n

Bena testified that it is possible that county officials would not catch fraud, for example, if a circulator provided a registered voter\u2019s information without their knowledge or consent. He noted county election officials also aren\u2019t handwriting experts.<\/p>\n

Much of Kuehn\u2019s initial lawsuit focused on instances where the two-out-of-three rule wasn\u2019t followed, or when the campaign wasn\u2019t disclosing whether circulators were paid. However, Kuen\u2019s attorneys largely avoided those arguments on Tuesday<\/a>, for the most part focusing on notaries and circulators, like Evnen\u2019s attorneys.<\/p>\n

David Wilson Jr., associate general counsel for the Secretary of State\u2019s Office and director of licensing, who oversees the work of notaries for the office, explained that notarizations give \u201cpresumptive evidence\u201d over a matter\u2019s legal validity.<\/p>\n

Wilson said notaries must physically witness an \u201coath\u201d and confirm the identity of whose documents they are notarizing. In this case, that\u2019s a notarization for a circulator swearing to the validity of the signatures they\u2019ve gathered.<\/p>\n

The Nebraska Attorney General\u2019s Office has alleged that thousands of signatures were collected where those requirements weren\u2019t met.<\/p>\n

Wilson testified that he is unaware of his office having criminal prosecutorial authority over notaries or of instances where one document being invalidated led to every document a particular notary touched being tossed.<\/p>\n

At least one notary, Jacy Todd of York, has been criminally charged in the case. He faces 24 counts of alleged malfeasance. Todd is a prospective witness in the case but is currently facing medical issues that raised questions whether he\u2019ll be able to testify in court.<\/p>\n

Wilson said he is unaware of any other notaries being criminally charged for malfeasance.<\/p>\n

Kait Madsen, an attorney for the ballot sponsors, asked Wilson whether there is additional training or continuing education for notaries, which he said there is not.<\/p>\n

Wilson said a mistake doesn\u2019t always mean malfeasance.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone makes mistakes,\u201d Wilson said. \u201cIt\u2019s fact dependent on what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dual investigations<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kory Langhofer is a high-profile, Phoenix-based elections attorney and co-founder of Signafide, a cloud-based petition validation service that Kuehn hired to review the petitions. The firm uses artificial intelligence and manual labor to review petitions nationwide.<\/p>\n

Langhofer has represented various clients nationwide, including former President Donald Trump\u2019s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, including questions about the 2020 Arizona election results; Carly Fiorina\u2019s Republican presidential campaign in 2016; and then-Gov. Mitt Romney\u2019s (R) presidential campaign in 2012.<\/p>\n

He testified that he began working in the ballot access field in 2011, has worked in all U.S. states and territories at least twice, and has reviewed at least 17 state ballot measure petitions, one of which involved a client favoring marijuana legalization.<\/p>\n

Signafide\u2019s process involves AI and hours of visual review, Langhofer said. However, he noted the firm didn\u2019t receive all the scans of the Nebraska petition pages, so his estimates would likely undercount some alleged irregularities.<\/p>\n

Hayes objected to using the network analysis because of Langhofer\u2019s noted limitations. Mackin said the analysis is intended to corroborate evidence from the Attorney General\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n

John Brennan, a civil investigator and certified fraud examiner in the Attorney General\u2019s Office, walked Viglianco through a handful of examples of questionable circulator or notary signatures and instances where a circulator notarized his or her own petition sheet.<\/p>\n

Brennan said he has never investigated a case involving circulator fraud or notary malfeasance but said it is similar to consumer protection cases he\u2019s investigated.<\/p>\n

Brennan said he reviewed more than 25,000 pages and outlined multiple pieces of evidence with some \u201cfacial\u201d defects that he said were improperly validated, some of which were forwarded to a handwriting expert who is expected to be called as a witness later this week.<\/p>\n

The attorneys for Kuehn and the ballot sponsors will continue questioning Brennan on Thursday.<\/p>\n

This story was first published by Nebraska Examiner.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Federal Officials Discuss New OSHA Program On Marijuana Industry Workplace Hazards<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

The post Court Trial Over Nebraska\u2019s Medical Marijuana Ballot Signatures Begins<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n


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\u201cThese are not isolated incidents. This is large, large-scale, known malfeasance by key campaign workers.\u201d By Zach Wendling, Nebraska Examiner The trial over Nebraska\u2019s two medical cannabis ballot measures began Tuesday with a broad examination into notary publics, citizen-led initiatives and the different groups that have reviewed the petition signatures.Continue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":457,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[81],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78706"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/457"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78707,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78706\/revisions\/78707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}