Campaigns to legalize recreational marijuana use and allow ranked-choice voting in Missouri both turned in voter signatures by Sunday’s deadline, putting the measures one step closer to appearing on statewide ballots in November.
In order to get a proposal on the ballot, campaigns needed to collect enough voter signatures from six of the state’s eight congressional districts, or about 170,000 signatures.
The recreational pot campaign, Legal Missouri 2022, had already collected nearly twice the required number of signatures by mid-April, and it turned in more than 385,000 signatures on Sunday, organizers said.
Recreational marijuana
Adults aged 21 and older could buy and grow weed for personal consumption as early as this year if voters approve the amendment.
Backers of the ballot proposal are highlighting a provision that would erase past weed-related convictions for nonviolent offenders and those whose conviction didn’t include selling to minors or driving while high. Local NAACP chapters, the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri, criminal defense lawyers and other civil rights advocacy groups endorsed automatic expungement, and it could broaden support for the initiative among Republican criminal justice advocates. Seven other states with legal recreational marijuana have also adopted automatic expungement policies. [Read more at St. Louis Post-Dispatch]
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