Pubdate: Wed, 22 Sep 1999 Source: Rocky Mountain News (CO) Copyright: 1999 Denver Publishing Co. Contact: 400 W. Colfax, Denver, CO 80204 Website: http://www.denver-rmn.com/ Author: Peter Blake and Berny Morson, Staff Writers VOTERS WILL DECIDE ON MARIJUANA New secretary of state says her predecessor undercounted petitions; 66 are found in office The medical marijuana initiative that was kicked off the Colorado ballot last fall will be on it next year -- and supporters won't even have to gather new signatures. A new petition count has revealed that the late Secretary of State Victoria Buckley made a mistake when she kept the initiative off the ballot for lack of signatures. As a result, voters will decide in November 2000 whether terminally ill people should be allowed to relieve their pain by smoking a marijuana, said Donetta Davidson, who succeeded Buckley in July. Davidson on Tuesday said her staff reviewed the signature count and found that more than 2,500 had been improperly disqualified by Buckley's staff. She said the initiative had 253 more signatures than the 54,242 needed to make the November 1998 election ballot. Some of the signatures included in Davidson's new count were on 66 petitions found in Buckley's office after she died of heart failure July 14. "I feel very good," said Martin Chilcutt, a retired psychologist and community volunteer who led the effort to put the initiative on the ballot. The proposal would allow physicians to authorize the use of marijuana by patients suffering from cancer and other painful diseases. The initiative was in and out of state courts during the summer and fall of 1998 as Chilcutt and his supporters struggled to demonstrate that their petitions contained enough valid voter signatures to qualify for the ballot. The item was eventually put on the ballot over Buckley's objections, and Coloradans voted on it. But the state Supreme Court overruled that decision, and the votes were never counted. Davidson said she was told the week she took office that a recount was under way and that the marijuana initiative would qualify for the ballot. Chilcutt said Buckley admitted before she died that she'd erred and that the proposal did in fact have enough signatures to make the ballot. Davidson said she personally counted the signatures on the 66 petitions found in Buckley's office. She said she assumes the petitions were in Buckley's office because Buckley was helping to count them at the time of her death. "The only thing I can say is, she was helping in checking those," Davidson said. Some of the problems can be traced to the use of temporary workers to check signatures, Davidson said. "There's a human error factor in checking petitions," she said. "You're working with temps, and she (Buckley) had a short time to work them, so I would say human error was what accounted for the mistakes." The number of signatures was close to the minimum needed to appear on the ballot, she said. Chilcutt declined to speculate on why Buckley got the count wrong or why 66 petitions were in her office. "Bless her heart, she's not here," he said. Sam Riddle, who was Buckley's spokesman, said problems occurred because "the secretary of state is allocated far fewer people than they need to count signatures," many of which come in at the last minute. Riddle said he thinks the 66 petitions were in Buckley's office because she was counting them. - --- MAP posted-by: Don Beck