Lawsuit claims Secretary of State’s Office did not count valid signatures for Lake casino question

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)

Supporters of an Osage River gambling boat say Missouri's Secretary of State illegally deprived voters of their rights to put the issue on the November ballot.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, Osage River Gaming and Convention asks a judge to order that the proposal be put on the ballot. The Secretary of State's Office announced earlier this month that the petition did not have enough signatures.

According to the lawsuit, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft found the petition was short 2,031 signatures from legal voters in the state's Second Congressional District, the area south and east of St. Louis.

However, Osage River Gaming and Convention said the office and local election authorities didn't count valid signatures of legal voters when verifying the petition.

"We found an excess of 2,500 signatures that should have, we believe, been counted," said ORGC Spokesperson John Hancock said. "If those are counted, then we believe we qualify for the ballot."

The group submitted its initiative petition to the Secretary of State's Office on May 5. After a petition has been turned in, the office takes inventory of every petition page by county, according to the Secretary of State's website.

The office can choose to verify every signature on the petition or use random sampling to determine if the petition has enough signatures to make it to the ballot.

The petition pages are then copied and sent to the counties' local election authorities to verify each signature on the petition. Once those are returned to the Secretary of State's Office, the office then tallies the valid signatures.

In this case, petitions were sent to each county's local election authority to verify every individual signature.

Osage River Gaming and Convention said in its lawsuit that it believes the Secretary of State's Office or local election authorities verifying signatures failed to count legal signatures due to reasons including:

• Determining a signature was of someone not registered to vote when in fact that person is registered to vote
• Determining the voter listed the wrong name when in fact it was the correct name
• Determining the voter listed a wrong address when the address was actually correct
• Determining a signature was not written in a form similar to how the voter's signature has appeared elsewhere.

Hancock said they don't believe this was intentional, saying they believe the people working on the petition just missed things.

"They will argue that the signatures don't match and that's a very subjective rationale," Hancock said. "We believe we've got the name, we've got the address, the person has signed it, they know their congressional districts and we think those are valid signatures, as well."

Including these signatures would allow the petition to have more than the necessary 36,099 signatures from the Second Congressional District, according to the lawsuit, thus allowing the motion to be put on the ballot.

Hancock said after the Secretary of State's Office determined last week the petition was insignificant, ORGC had a firm that recounted the signatures and found it had more than enough to get the issue on the ballot.

A spokesperson for the Secretary of State's Office said Wednesday afternoon they had not been officially served with the lawsuit and have no comment.

Court documents show on Wednesday that Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft was summoned to appear in court within 30 days.

Hancock said he is optimistic the issue will be resolved quickly in court.

He said he is fighting to get this on the ballot because it would provide a new attraction at the Lake of the Ozarks with a positive economic impact on the area. He also said it would generate money for early childhood literacy programs.

"The lake does not have a facility like this," Hancock said. "Our proposal includes a convention facility, a hotel, as well as the casino, and it would be a year-round attraction in a region of the state that has a pretty seasonal population."

Initiative petitions that have made the ballot include one to legalize abortion, one that would raise the minimum wage and require employers to provide paid leave and another that would legalize sports gambling in Missouri.