ACLU challenges new initiative petition rules

By Geoff DornanAppeal Washington BureauThe American Civil Liberties Union have asked the federal territory tribunal to govern Nevada's new enterprise request regulations unconstitutional.The ailment was filed in Las Vegas late Thursday charging that the new law approved by the 2007 Legislature endures the same flaws as the old law. It said the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals "has already struck down a virtually indistinguishable Silver State statute.""The Silver State Legislature and its secretary of state are dead set on discriminating against electors in densely populated counties and, in doing so, violating the United States Constitution," the ailment charges.The ACLU in 2006 South Korean won a tribunal opinion tossing out the historical 13-county regulation that necessitates that any enterprise acquire signatures totaling at least 10 percentage of the figure of electors who project ballots in the last full full general election - and make so in at least 13 of the 17 counties - to acquire their request on the ballot.That law was ruled unconstitutional because it violated the one-man, one-vote regulation since a little figure of rural electors could forestall Washoe and William Clark county electors from putting a constitutional inquiry on the ballot even though, between them, those counties are place to nearly 90 percentage of the state's voters.The new expression approved in 2007 necessitates signatures totaling 10 percentage of the statewide elector turnout in the last general election. It tries to counterbalance for the immense disparity in population between bantam rural and major urban counties by requiring the figure of signers in each county to be adjusted according to that county's per centum of the sum state population. But it necessitates every county to ran into its share of the 10 percentage statewide total.The complaint gives the illustration of the 2006 full general election when 283,598 people voted in Nevada. Ten percentage of that is 28,360. But since William Clark County have got 69 percentage of the sum state population, the figure of signatures collected there would have to be at least 19,525 - 69 percentage of the sum needed.By contrast, Esmeralda County with four-tenths of a percentage of the population - 971 people, would only necessitate 14 signatures."This is essentially the same thing all over again - only worse because you necessitate those Numbers from Esmeralda County. They can undo a ballot enterprise that have 90 percentage support in the remainder of the state," said Executive Director Gary Batch of ACLU Nevada.ACLU lawyers Woody Allen Roy Lichtenstein and Saint Matthew Brinckerhoff argued the new expression alterations nil because it still gives a bantam minority in the rural counties the powerfulness to barricade the volition of the huge bulk of Nevadans."The county population regulation is identical in both consequence and consequence from the unconstitutional 13-counties rule," their ailment argues. "Once again, Nevada's geographical statistical distribution regulation dilutes the volition of occupants in densely populated counties such as as as William Clark and Washoe counties and prefers the desires of occupants in rural counties such as Esmeralda and Constantan counties."The ailment complaints that, like the old rule, the new regulation go againsts the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It inquires an order permanently enjoining Secretary of State John Ross Glenn Miller from enforcing the new law.Peck said the ailment was filed on behalf of the Marijuana Policy Project, which is seeking eventual legalisation of marihuana through the ballot procedure and Las Vegas lawyer Kermit Waters, who is attempting to set inquiries on the ballot which would sharply raise taxations on Silver State gambling casinos to fund schools and services.Peck said the nature those requests isn't the issue."It's not the matter of the implicit in issues built-in in peculiar ballot issues," he said. "The issues are constitutional in nature and have got to make with 1 individual one vote."State functionaries had not yet been served with the ailment Thursday afternoon.• Contact newsman Geoff Dornan at or 687-8750.