What can you do to help? If you are in Washington State, please sign up to volunteer. You can join us on Sensible Washington’s Facebook page. If you are anywhere in the US, you can make a contribution of any size to help Sensible Washington move on to 2011 and retire our remaining expenses from this year’s cost-efficient I-1068 campaign (total expenditures were about $40,000), which are mostly mileage reimbursements for coordinators and printing expenses. We are two days into a campaign to raise $10,000 by the end of July and would appreciate your help. Our donation page is secure and encrypted.

Thank you for your support. Let’s legalize in 2011.

BTW, I do have comments closed on the site right now. This is a temporary move, designed to do nothing more than keep spam comments from piling up.

• AP story: “Organizers: Wash. legal pot measure won’t make ballot”

Hulse said that they had petitions that were clearly not I-1068–the Marijuana Reform Act–wrapped crosswise around a sheet of cardboard so that one could only see the signature lines but not the title and ballot summary language at the top of the petition. Hulse asked them if they’d turn in their signed copies of I-1068 to him, so he could get them into Sensible Washington’s offices.

“We actually don’t have that,” one of the men told Hulse, according to Hulse.

Meanwhile, a woman was signing the petition after being told it was the Marijuana Reform Act. She began saying “Sign it, sign it” to Hulse. Hulse got one of the men to flip the petition around so he could see the top of it and it was clearly marked as I-1107, which would repeal certain taxes enacted by the State Legislature earlier this year. Hulse went into the Safeway, phoned me and explained the situation. I asked him to try and get the men’s names, what company they worked for and to take their pictures on his cell phone.

Photos and details follow.

Note the bottom of the petition page; it does not contain the information printed on I-1068 petitions.

Close-up of I-1107 fraudulently portrayed as I-1068.

One of the persons collecting signatures for I-1107 yet telling citizens they are signing for I-1068 Marijuana Reform Act

Hulse went back outside where the men again asked him to sign the “Marijuana Reform Act.”

“The petition he put in my face was not 1068, it was 1107,” said Hulse. “And I said, ‘Let me see the marijuana reform one’. He was like. ‘Oh, I don’t have that have one. He has that one’. I asked his partner, ‘Can I see I-1068, the one you just asked me to sign?’

“We don’t have that one,” Hulse said the man told him.

“Why are you asking me to sign it if you don’t have it? You’re trying to trick me into signing this one,” Hulse said, referring to I-1107.

Hulse said the petitioner, who was getting anywhere from $3 to $3.50 per signature, told him that he was “told by his organization that they were allowed to say that.”

Hulse replied, “You guys can’t do that. You can’t tell people they’re signing something they’re not signing.”

“We have a right to make a living,” one of the petitioners told Hulse, according to Hulse.

According to Hulse, the pair started talking amongst themselves.

One of them said, “Ignore this guy. We can say whatever we want to say.”

I have left a voice mail for Tim Martin, a beverage industry executive and sponsor of I-1107, but have yet to receive a return call. In the morning, I will call the Attorney General’s office and file an appropriate complaint and ask them to investigate the situation, which on its face would appear to violate a law or two.

For those of you who didn’t catch today’s earlier events, please read this press release describing how Johnson was allegedly assaulted and harassed by a large, angry male property manager.

If anyone wants to do something similar elsewhere in Washington State–hint, hint–let us know about it.

Johnson says the man, who identified himself as the property manager,  verbally harassed her and then tired to remove her I-1068 signs which were legally displayed on public property. She and the man got into a struggle over the signs, the presence of which had been approved by Spokane police, and the man grabbed Johnson’s arm and pushed her out of the way. This occurred on public property. I-1068 would legalize marijuana use, possession and cultivation for adults 18 and older in Washington State.

Harassment of signature gatherers is illegal in Washington State and is punishable by three years in prison. Simple assault is illegal too.

“The minute people see signs that say ‘marijuana,’ it brings such hostility out in some people,” says Johnson, who suffered a mild scratch to her hand during the melee.

Johnson contacted police and filed a report with responding officers. She and Sensible Washington will ponder whether to bring harassment charges against the man, whom Sensible Washington is declining to name.

“It’s troubling that a man would attack a woman in such a fashion,” said Philip Dawdy, I-1068 campaign director and an initiative co-author. “We’ve faced far more obstacles than most initiative campaigns ever have, but harassment and assault of one of our volunteers is something we have zero tolerance for. It’s funny too that some in the press have written our campaign off as dead when we’re still actively gathering signatures in the field and now our volunteers are being attacked. That shows that we are very much alive.”

Johnson is currently trying to establish an alternate location to continue her signature gathering vigil through 8 a.m. Friday morning.

“It’s not rocket science,” Tim Eyman once told me about making I-695’s final weeks successful.

We just need to get as many people as possible in front of as many of their fellow citizens as possible. That’s all.

With I-1068, I’m pretty sure we’ve got an issue that rings the public’s bells as hard as car taxes did in 1999. I-1068 offers marijuana legalization and subsequent re-regulation by the State Legislature instead of the continuance of onerous and wasteful criminal penalties for adult use, possession and cultivation. There’s plenty of polling at this point to suggest that the public embraces the concept. We’ve just got to get the signatures.

Right now, we need to get about two-thirds of the 250,000 signatures I-695 got in 1999 to make sure I-1068 gets on the ballot. If they could do it in 1999, we can do it in 2010. We just have to stay on the job.

And to do that we need you to continue collecting signatures and to help us find new volunteers. You should also take a look at this instant volunteer kit created by one of our Bellingham coordinators Matthew Scott.

If you need copies of the initiative, you can contact your area coordinator. A list of coordinators statewide is here. We’ve got many thousands of copies of I-1068 available statewide. And you can always fill out our volunteer form right here.

You can also download copies of the initiative itself at the top right side of this page. Please only have it reproduced on 11×17 paper, double-sided, black and white. You’ll need to go to a professional print shop to do it–sorry, but the rules in this state are so archaic–but you can handle most of that exchange via email with most shops. Or you can upload it to a website such as Fedex Office allows and place your order electronically and pick it soon after at one of their local outlets.

You can keep on top of events we’re covering by keeping in touch with us on Facebook.

So let’s get out there and get this done. We need every signed petition in the state sent our way each remaining Monday of June or turned into an area coordinator each remaining Monday of the month. Our mailing address is on the petition.

“It’s flattering to be endorsed by a candidate for public office, especially one involving law enforcement,” said Philip Dawdy, I-1068’s campaign director and an initiative co-author. Kenny is the first candidate for public office to endorse the initiative, which currently is in its final month of signature gathering to reach its goal of 320,000 signatures by July 2. I-1068 is an all-volunteer effort.

“Snohomish County voters have a clear choice for prosecutor,” said Douglas Hiatt, I-1068’s main author and campaign chair. “Kenny’s endorsement speaks well for his grasp of the complex issues facing county leaders in these difficult economic times.”

While doorbelling, Kenny says he has heard from numerous Snohomish County voters that they consider marijuana legalization an important issue.
I-1068 has also been endorsed by the Libertarian Party of Washington, NORML, Seattle Police Chief (Ret.) Norm Stamper, the King County Democratic Central Committee, the Whatcom County Democrats, the 23rd, 30th, 37th, 39th and 41st Legislative District Democrats and former State Rep. Toby Nixon (R-Kirkland).

Two of the seized petitions will be returned to us promptly, according to a WestNET detective I spoke with earlier this morning. They will be picked up by our Bremerton coordinator from the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office evidence room, likely before the end of today.

These two petitions have been photocopied and I have asked WestNET to destroy those photocopies. They tell me they cannot without an agreement between the prosecution and defense because, well, that’s the way these things work. We will be working to make that agreement happen, but it will take some time. My sense of things, from talking with the WestNET detective, is that no one on the law enforcement side will oppose the destruction of those photocopies.

Why were they seized as evidence in the place? The WestNET detective I spoke with said their search warrant authorized them to take any kind of list or ledger they encountered during their search. That’s their explanation. I simply wish the officers who conducted the raid would’ve used a bit more discretion when they were grabbing lists and ledgers because I-1068 petitions are clearly marked as an initiative to the people and even have formal language directed to Secretary of State Sam Reed. Not exactly evidence of criminal activity.

The remaining problem is that the 420 Club people insist that there were 10 signed petitions seized in the raid and WestNET tells me they only have two and that they have gone through their evidence boxes from the raid and there are no other copies of the petition. So we’ve got a discrepancy here that I cannot account for. Neither can WestNET or the 420 Club. My hope is that these missing eight petitions will turn up later somewhere in the chain of evidence and be returned to us before July 2, our deadline to submit signed petitions to the Secretary of State.

My fingers are officially crossed both for the missing petitions and for the 420 Club people as they begin to defend themselves against charges all because our state’s medical marijuana law is vague–even the WestNET detective agrees with me on this–and offers slim protection to people providing physician-authorized medicine to legitimate patients.

The 420 Club raid is another example of why it is imperative to get I-1068 on the ballot, so if you haven’t signed the initiative please do so. If you’d like to volunteer to help gather signatures, please fill out our volunteer form right here and we’ll be in touch promptly. We only have until the end of June to get this done, so let’s all get this done.