Backers of a marijuana legalization effort disqualified last week by the Maine secretary of state’s office sued the state on Thursday, saying the decision should be overturned.
The dispute centers on more than 17,000 signatures that were tossed out by Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap and notarized by Stavros Mendros, the president of Olympic Consulting, a Lewiston signature-gathering firm.
Dunlap said he’s confident the case will fail.
Those signatures were among the nearly 48,000 of more than 99,000 signaturescollected by referendum proponents that were invalidated by Dunlap’s office last week. Just over 61,000 signatures were needed to get the question on the ballot.
The lawsuit on behalf of a group of petition signers was filed in Kennebec County Superior Court on Thursday afternoon. It says that Dunlap’s office acted outside its authority and asks the court to reverse the office’s decision to toss out nearly 27,000 signatures notarized by Mendros. [Read more at the Bangor Daily News]
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