In an email sent to organizers of the medical cannabis and decriminalization initiatives, the Wyoming Secretary of State’s office has tacitly admitted that information given to initiative organizers was incorrect and that they only needed 29,730 signatures instead of the over 40,000 initially directed.
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RIVERTON — In an email sent to organizers of the medical cannabis and decriminalization initiatives, the Wyoming Secretary of State’s office has tacitly admitted that information given to initiative organizers was incorrect and that they only needed 29,730 signatures instead of the over 40,000 initially directed. Under the newly revised rules, the Wyoming cannabis petitions would have qualified for the 2024 ballot with 36,000 signatures.
The Secretary’s office excused the error, depriving Wyoming voters of their rights, by saying in an email, “…We are a whole new election team, and we have undertaken a comprehensive review of the initiative process in recent months, primarily due to an initiative currently filed with our office.”
The referenced initiative is a policy that the current Secretary of State has publicly favored, publishing a press release supporting the proposal on official government letterhead. Petition organizers were quick to characterize the Secretary of State’s office response as unacceptable. “The people of Wyoming have the constitutional right to petition their government. The cannabis petitions should have been treated the same as the party affiliation initiative. Secretary Gray and his ‘new’ team should have provided the same deference and professionalism to the cannabis petition. Why did they not undertake a ‘comprehensive review of the initiative process’ while there was a pending initiative on the table? Their behavior deprived Wyomingites of their rights,”said Wyoming NORML executive director Bennett Sondeno.