Reply #5: MO: Petitions backer sues secretary of state [View All]

Kansas City Star

Posted on Sat, Jun. 03, 2006

By KIT WAGAR
The Star’s Jefferson City correspondent
The sponsor of two ballot measures rejected by the Missouri secretary of state’s office sued Friday, arguing that disorganized petitions should not override 400,000 signatures in support.

One initiative sought to prohibit the government from taking property for private development projects through a process known as eminent domain. The second sought to set new, more stringent limits on state government spending.

The lawsuits, which were filed by a group called Missourians in Charge, say clerical errors in the petitions do not justify a decision to keep the two measures off the ballot. State law, the lawsuits say, requires the secretary of state to overlook clerical and other technical errors when in the process of validating the signatures.

“On May 7, we turned in 400,000 signatures. On May 25, the secretary of state says she is not going to count them because page numbers were out of order,” said Patrick Tuohey of Kansas City, treasurer of Missourians in Charge. “We believe that the secretary of state is wrong on the law and wrong on the Constitution. Ultimately, the will of the people to have their voices heard trumps any bureaucratic technicality.”

Secretary of State Robin Carnahan rejected the two measures because the stacks of signature pages were submitted in little discernible order with signatures from different counties mixed on unnumbered pages. Her spokeswoman, Stacie Temple, said state law requires lists of signatures on initiative petitions to be submitted by county and on sequentially numbered pages.

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/14730284.htm