SQ 820: Don’t bogart that initiative petition, my friend

Sunday, August 28, 2022

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COMMENTARY

While the general election is rapidly approaching, one state question seems to have been moving at a snail’s pace.

After a spring challenge of State Question 820’s “gist” that took a couple of months to resolve, supporters of this initiative petition legalizing recreational marijuana again find themselves in front of the Oklahoma Supreme Court after a third-party state contractor validated that their signature submissions met the threshold to qualify for the Nov. 8 general election ballot. But it took that contractor a little longer than expected to administer the state’s new signature verification requirements, so a hearing was held Friday regarding SQ 820 petitioners’ request to expedite ballot title approval and allow for ballots to be printed ahead of a deadline for mailing them out.

The stops, starts, seven-week validation process and Supreme Court hearings have left Oklahomans unclear whether they will be able to decide the fate of SQ 820 in November. Despite the general election being more than three months away, a hodgepodge of deadlines and legal proceedings has left even the most moderate stoners rolling their eyes. Is no one with the Secretary of State’s Office or the Oklahoma Supreme Court hip about time?

SQ 820’s saga has it all: Signatures, ballot language battles and the Oklahoma Supreme Court. But for some onlookers, it seems like the drama has been playing out in slow motion. When will the court rule on this latest motion? Monday? Before the end of the month?

Can the court make its determination in less time than the seven weeks it took Western Petition Systems to validate every signature? Can the court move more quickly than it did back in the spring when the leader of a competing marijuana initiative petition challenged SQ 820’s gist? Did the public even realize that past initiative petitions — such as SQ 788’s medical marijuana legalization — lacked line-by-line signature verification?

Speaking of, a quick look back at one of my prior SQ 788 comics offers a good reminder that policy proposals surrounding marijuana in Oklahoma seem a bit sluggish by nature.