Marijuana Policy Project

Joplin voters this fall will not see a ballot initiative calling for decriminalizing personal possession of marijuana.

The Joplin city clerk has notified Kelly Maddy, president of Sensible Joplin, that petitions circulated by his group seeking an election on the question still fell 531 signatures short of the number needed to place it on the ballot.

Maddy's group initially submitted petitions July 10 that were more than 1,000 signatures short, and his group was given a chance under Joplin's city charter to try to make up that number. The group collected more signatures and resubmitted the petitions Aug. 10. The city clerk had until Friday to finish verifying the signatures from the second round.

City Clerk Barbara Hogelin said Tuesday that she had notified Maddy that his second round of signatures had been verified. She said a total of 4,125 signatures were deemed valid, but that 4,656 valid signatures were needed to place the issue on the ballot. She said the city charter prohibits any further action on the issue.

Maddy said his group also is thwarted from placing the issue on the November ballot because the state's deadline for submitting ballot questions was Monday.

Maddy said the group believes that the number of signatures required for placing an issue on the ballot made the task unsuccessful. He contends that the voter rolls are inflated with bad addresses.

"They need to regularly purge the voter rolls, and they have not," he said. "We feel we would have had the amount needed if they would have the records purged."

But Jasper County Clerk Bonnie Earl, whose elections office takes care of those issues, said the rolls are worked on every day.

"I don't know how he would know that we don't purge or have information as to how we do purge," Earl said. She said the office canvasses voters by sending out letters of verification every two years.

"After those are returned, if they're returned address-requested, if they give us a new address, we put that information in the system, but we verify it," she said. "If we don't get it back, it takes two general elections to be able to purge those voters. That's the law, so we follow that."

Maddy said he would confer with an attorney who represents Sensible Joplin to determine if there is any action that can be taken in regard to the voter rolls or the number of valid signatures required for getting an issue on the ballot.