Opponents of legalized marijuana drop challenge
Mainers Protecting Our Youth and Communities, the organization that led the effort against the legalization of marijuana, has withdrawn its challenge of Question 1 and withdrew its request with the Secretary of State to recount the Nov. 8 vote results.
Preliminary results had shown a narrow victory for the legalized marijuana supporters, with 378,288 voters (or 50.17%) voting “yes” and 375,668 (or 49.83%) voting “no.”
Representatives from the No on 1 campaign notified the Secretary of State’s Bureau of Elections on Saturday that they would not continue the recount, which started about two weeks ago and was to have resumed in January. In addition, they contacted the marijuana legalization campaign to congratulate them on their election win.
“We promised folks that if we came to a point where we could not see any chance of reversing the result, we would not drag the process out,” said Newell Augur, legal counsel for No on 1. “We are satisfied that the count and the result are accurate.”
The margin between the two sides narrowed to under 4,000 votes as a result of the recount completed prior to Saturday.
“The trend was moving in our direction, especially after the first week,” Augur said in a statement. “But after the second week it was clear that the trend was not going to move at the velocity we needed to change the result.”
Initial estimates suggest that the total cost of the recount was less than $15,000. More than 200,000 ballots from 50 Maine towns were recounted over the past two weeks.
The ballots in the vast majority of those towns were collected by State Police troopers on existing time and little to no overtime costs were necessary, according to Question 1 opponents. The Secretary of State’s office, similarly, incurred no overtime costs as a result of the recount.
“Given the extraordinary close margin, the recount was a worthwhile and necessary endeavor,” Augur said in his statement, expressing gratitude to the elections staff for their recount efforts.
“There isn’t any state that conducts recounts as efficiently and effectively as we do in Maine,” Augur said. “Julie Flynn and her staff are a remarkable group of public servants.”
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