Well so much for Mississippi going legal! Maybe some other day, maybe some other year, maybe even in my lifetime!
Dear Team Legalize,
Today (12/29/15) our ballot initiative to regulate cannabis like alcohol expires. Circuit Clerk are not required to certify expired ballot initiative petitions. If you have petitions that have not been certified, please just send them to me and I will keep them with the other petitions that were certified and try to use them to influence our Mississippi politicians in 2016 to change our laws in regards to marijuana. My address is on the petition.
To the best of my knowledge, no one has stepped forward to renew/sponsor ballot initiative 48, as it is currently written. If they did sponsor it, and it was successful, it would have to collect all of the needed signatures by Oct 3rd to be on the 2017 ballot, or on the 2018 ballot for their one year deadline.
Dilbert Hoseman, our Secretary of State has never responded to my August 5th letter, nor has any of his staff who were copied. I sent all of the County Circuit Clerks a Freedom of Information Act letter requesting a final report on how many signatures they certified for ballot initiative 48. Only 26 of the 82 Clerks have responded. A report is easily made and can be electronically send from the State Election Management System (SEMS), but only if the information was entered. I was gobsmacked to find out that Hinds County deliberately did not use the SEMS, and hope that once they get their new Clerk sworn in, they will use it. One County sent me a typed list of who signed their petition (they didn't use the SEMS). Many clerks sent their certified petitions to the circulators, some of whom never forwarded them to me, which must be why they have a record of certifying more signatures than I have for their County. I am sharing the numbers by county below, but I post the number that is higher if the Clerk said they certified more than I received.
The truth about Mississippi and marijuana is that Mississippians are too afraid of the police to change the law themselves by supporting a ballot initiative with their signature(s) of
approval.It is very interesting that there are more people who are members of this Facebook page than we have signatures on our ballot initiative 48, so many of you never signed it even though you live in Mississippi and could have registered to vote and signed our petition.
But for those of you who did sign it, and especially to the volunteers who collected signatures, thank you.
Your signature on our ballot initiative is now a document that we can mail to elected officials to pressure them to legalize marijuana in Mississippi with their legislative abilities starting in January of 2016.
America is rising up to legalize marijuana. Neighboring states have ballot initiatives, have new laws that are changed and Mississippi will eventually change with them. Our ballot initiative petition 48 was a huge first step down the road of legalizing marijuana for Mississippians, and now we must all be supportive registered voters and vote every election and have a conversation with our elected officials about how we expect them to change our laws so that we eventually succeed and marijuana is regulated like alcohol.
Our Facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/groups/yesonproposition48 has posted cannabis information ( and will continue 2 shares stories ) about studies pertaining to medicinal cannabis, alcohol, tobacco, legal industrial hemp in Tennessee and Kentucky and other states, federal laws, state laws, other ballot initiatives, and the movement America is making towards legalizing marijuana. Please keep yourself informed so that when you speak to elected officials, whether they are your mayor or your alderman, that you know the facts about marijuana.
If you call our US Congressman or two Senators; Roger Wicker
202-228-0378 or Thad Cochran
202-224-5054 and ask them to change the federal marijuana laws, especially in regards to the scheduling of marijuana, please know that their staff will look up your name to see if you are a registered voter of Mississippi. Your voice will lack any weight if you are not a registered voter. That is just a fact. Most politicians will look you up to see if you are a registered voter before they decide if they are going to help you. If you want your words to be taken seriously by elected officials then you must be one of their VOTING constituents.You can register to vote now ( download a voter registration application from the internet and mail it to your County Circuit Clerk before the February 8th, 2016 deadline ) and vote on March 8th in the presidential primary so that your voice has the weight of your convictions because -->>> you show up to vote!!!!
You cannot register to vote in Mississippi online, you must fill out the voter registration application form and send your original signature, (or take your original signature and application) to your COUNTY Circuit Clerk.
Do not make any comment about how you do not want to serve on -->>> jury duty. We need your ass to serve on jury duty so that you can rule that there will not be any punishment for marijuana crimes. That's right, you can do it on jury duty by refusing to convict. We have posted stories about this on this Facebook page, and Mississippi spends more money prosecuting other Mississippians for marijuana crimes than all other crimes combined. Mississippi arrests 42,000 people every year for marijuana crimes. Be proud and go serve jury duty and judge your peers as you would want them to judge you.
Judge them Innocent of this victimless crime so that their children are returned to them and they do not have a felony on their record because they did nothing wrong, they just used cannabis.
So our deadline is here and we have failed to legalize marijuana using the ballot initiative system. Perhaps in the future the ballot initiative process might be tried again but not by me. Some other brave/ insane person can choose to sponsor legalize marijuana ballot initiative, & I will be happy to advise them about my experience so that they might be more successful... but it is faster to get our elected officials to do it. Right now a ballot initiative that collects enough signatures would not be on the ballot until 2017. (There are 7 other ballot initiatives going on.)
Please support legalizing marijuana every year. You do this by voting.
Vote every election and require elected officials to listen to what you want them to do which is to legalize marijuana in Mississippi
Thank you for your efforts and for supporting this Facebook page.
Happy new year!
Sincerely,
Kelly Jacobs
Here are the figures to what was collected in each county. Some counties did not provide me with the certified petitions, so the final figure is greater because I included the numbers they said they certified vs my numbers, or whichever number was higher.
The first colum of numbers is certified petitions, the 2nd number is rejected signatures. Some counties rejected more than they certified!
total signatures 13320 total rejected: 9987
ADAMS 128 101
Alcorn 243 140
Amite 2 2
ATTALA 77 38
Benton 29 7
Bolivar 25 12
Calhoun 48 27
Carroll 4 4
Chickasaw 64 32
Choctaw 1 3
Claiborne 4 0
Clarke 31 17
Clay 36 15
Coahoma 79 35
Convington 29 12
Copiah 9 3
Desoto 1853 839
Forrest 422 229
Franklin 63 33
George 39 29
Greene 48 13
GRENADA 33 15
Hancock 185 85
Harrison 1302 1703
HINDS 414 707
Holmes 5 1
Humphreys 5 0
Issaquena 0 0
Itawamba 154 238
Jackson 527 647
Jasper 20 8
JEFFERSON 7 4
Jefferson Davis 10 15
JONES 135 95
Kemper 2 0
Lafayette 825 726
Lamar 142 100
Lauderdale
1211 289
Lawrence 119 16
LEAKE 0 0
Lee 1036 851
Leflore 233 249
Lincoln 85 113
Lowndes 269 218
MADISON 217 202
Madison 139 74
Marion 24 9
Marshall 72 38
Monroe 179 89
MONTGOMERY 31 42
Neshoba 73 38
Newton 128 31
Noxubee 2 2
Oktibbeha 48 12
PANOLA 77 33
Pearl River 24 38
Perry 10 7
Pike 51 78
Pontotoc 319 270
Prentiss 115 90
Quitman 6 1
Rankin 321 540
Scott 10 0
Sharkey 1 0
Simpson 0 2
Smith 0 0
Stone 42 43
Sunflower 11 4
TALLAHACHIE 9 8
Tate 278 83
Tippah 182 84
Tishomingo 465 152
Tunica 11 12
Union 167 141
Walthall 12 8
Warren 29 15
Washington 85 96
WAYNE 93 40
Webster 19 9
Wilkinson 0 0
Winston 15 0
Yalobusha 28 11
Yazoo 74 14
total certified 13320
total rejected 9987
Aint no place like home but sure does suck!
and has a prohibition problem and continues to blame Colorodo for it's own states problems.
