WE’VE COME SO FAR
It looks like Bakersfield’s most recent attempt by advocates to get medical cannabis onto the November isn’t going to happen this time around. Approximately 22,000 residents signed petitions in support of the measure, which would have replaced the city’s current collective ban with state regulations. Unfortunately, even after spending almost $60,000 to try and get the measure on the ballot, the advocates were unable to secure the necessary signatures. The requirement was to have 15,438 verified signatures, which is 10 percent of the number of people who are registered to vote in Bakersfield, but only an estimated 9,300-9,500 verified signatures have ultimately been collected. There has been no updates on the reason why so few of the signatures were not verified, “We expected more but we think there may have been some improprieties with voter cards as well as the petitions themselves, so we have an expert scrubbing them for us,” stated Jeff Jarvis, a board member of the Kern Citizens for Patient Rights. Officials have 30 days to verify signatures that are submitted for an initiative, and Kern County must get approval from the Bakersfield City Council by August 12, which as of this writing, is unlikely to happen.
Update, September 14, 2016:
Kern Citizens for Patient Rights did not submit their collected signatures for the deadline to qualify for the November general election ballot in 2016. However, over the past few weeks the group has managed to obtain an estimated 26,000 signatures and is still working on getting more, with hopes that enough signatures can be verified for a future ballot (hoping for 2017 or 2018). The next deadline to submit signatures for this initiative is Oct. 25.
