Ballot Revival

But that didn't stop a broader push for a marijuana ballot initiative during this fall's election.

The Santa Fe County Commission voted unanimously Tuesday afternoon to put an advisory question on the Nov. 4 general election ballot asking voters' opinions on decriminalizing marijuana countywide. A day earlier, the Bernalillo County Board of Commissioners voted 3-2 to put a similar question on its ballot.

The questions, which are legally non-binding to both counties, will simply poll residents about whether they want local elected officials to reduce penalties for those who get caught in possession of one ounce of marijuana or less. It's the latest step in a summer-long push to get voters in Santa Fe and Albuquerque to weigh in on the issue this November.

Santa Fe County Commissioner Liz Stefanics says she introduced the advisory question after receiving a "direct request" to do so by some of the ballot initiative's organizers who want to get the question to a vote. Commissioner Kathy Holian asked to be listed as a co-sponsor at the meeting.

"It is a drug, but it is definitely not a hardcore drug," Holian said of marijuana shortly before her vote. "I have to admit, particularly everybody I knew when I was in college used marijuana, and I know of no person for whom it was a gateway drug to more hardcore drugs."

The move comes on the heels of the vote last month by Santa Fe's City Council to approve scaled-back penalties for pot within the city limits as requested by signatories on a petition drive. Before that, the Albuquerque city clerk had rejected too many collected signatures to put a question on its city ballot. Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry also recently vetoed a similar non-binding citywide advisory question that the City Council approved last month.

Many Republicans have decried the votes as a tactic to bring out liberal and left-leaning voters to the polls for the upcoming midterm election, which traditionally features lower turnout than when the president's office is at stake. Emily Kaltenbach, state director of Drug Policy Alliance New Mexico, says the real purpose of the vote is that it will demonstrate the shifting popular opinion on marijuana, which will give better potential for broader statewide marijuana reform come January, when the state legislative session begins.

"We'll have a greater understanding of the breadth of support than if we just had this issue voted on by our elected officials," Kaltenbach says. Secretary of State Dianna Duran, a Republican who is running for reelection this fall, continued to raise concerns about putting a decriminalization question on the ballot at the Bernalillo County Commission meeting. Rob Doughty, an Albuquerque attorney representing Duran's office, said at the meeting that no law exists giving commissioners the power to put an advisory question on the general election ballot.

"There are absolutely no provisions for stamping an opinion," Doughty said. Bernalillo County Commissioner Wayne Johnson, a Republican who voted against putting the question on the ballot, referred to a 2012 opinion by Attorney General Gary King, a Democrat currently running for governor, that said municipalities do not have the authority to place advisory questions on statewide general election ballots.

King's office issued that letter in response to an attempt to get a citywide minimum wage question on the general election ballot that year, but the same year he reversed course. King's office also wrote a letter earlier this month stating that counties indeed do have the authority to put a question "that does not carry the force of law" on a statewide general election ballot.

No one from the secretary of state's office showed up to raise concerns at the Santa Fe County Commission meeting. Ken Ortiz, Duran's chief of staff, tells SFR that anyone can challenge either Duran's or the County Commission's positions in court.

But the commissioners' interpretation of their own power prevailed during both meetings. Santa Fe County Clerk Geraldine Salazar underlined the same point as Doughty, but from a different perspective.

"In my research and discussion," she said of the advisory question, "there's nothing that prohibits it by law."

Santa Fe Reporter