Hired canvassers seek to persuade voters to take their name off Utah's medical marijuana ballot ...

Hired canvassers seek to persuade voters to take their name off Utah’s medical marijuana ballot initiative


A broad coalition of Utah organizations representing doctors, conservative activists and narcotics officers has hired a pool of well-paid canvassers to speak with voters who signed a medical marijuana ballot initiative — suggesting they’ve been misled and urging them to remove their names before the May 15 deadline.

“This is legal,” said Mark Fotheringham, spokesman for the Utah Medical Association, the lead group pushing to upend the petition. “It’s totally aboveboard. We’re not trying to hide anything.”

The initiative has already qualified, at least tentatively, for the Nov. 6 ballot, collecting more than 40,000 signatures above the required threshold and in 27 of the state’s 29 Senate districts (when it needed just 26). But Drug Safe Utah intends to target signers in the counties where it collected the lowest margins so it no longer meets the geographic requirements.

It’s likely a long-shot effort.

In Senate District 29, for instance, the petition has 408 signatures above what it needs. That’s its thinnest cushion. To be successful, Drug Safe Utah would need to convince 409 voters to remove their names. And they’d still have two more districts to overturn, too.

Read more: https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2018/05/03/hired-canvassers-seek-to-persuade-voters-to-take-their-name-off-utahs-medical-marijuana-ballot-initiative/