A judge is set to rule today on whether a group that claims its members were harassed while collecting petition signatures can have a deadline extension, a prospect experts said would put the Nov. 2 election at risk.
In a marathon emergency hearing that started Friday and lasted until 1 a.m. Saturday and then continued from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday, District Judge Kenneth Cory heard testimony about whether state employees illegally restricted signature-gatherers for Nevadans for Sound Government and, if so, what could be done to repair the alleged damage to their cause.
Completed petitions are due tomorrow, and election officials argued that extending the deadline could jeopardize the state's readiness for the Nov. 2 general election, while a Nevadans for Sound Government lawyer argued that a delay wouldn't have dire consequences.
The group wants to put two referendums on the ballot, one to repeal last year's $833 million tax increase and another to prohibit government workers from serving in the Legislature.
The judge's decision today could be a significant interpretation of the Nevada Constitution and state law, lawyers on both sides said on Saturday.
"This is one of the most important cases that could ever come before the court," Joel Hansen, the lawyer for the petitioning group, said after Saturday's session. "This case is about whether we are free men and free women who are the sovereign people or whether we are the slaves and subjects of the government."
Hansen and other Hansen family members are the most prominent members of Nevada's Independent American Party, an aggressively libertarian group that has fought against the Patriot Act and what it sees as government intrusion on any number of fronts.
Bart Patterson, the attorney for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, which is one of the defendants in the case, said the decision could set a significant precedent. The statute that sets out procedures for petitioners, whose right to seek ballot initiatives is guaranteed by Article 17 of the state constitution, is "problematic," Patterson said.
"All of the questions (about the statute) haven't been answered by any case in Nevada," he said. "This case could be the start of a body of law that could provide some guidance on these matters."
At the end of Saturday's session, the judge explained his reasoning for hearing the case as an urgent matter.
"Whether or not it (the case) ultimately turns on the question of whether there has been a violation of the statute or a violation of constitutional rights, it cannot be gainsaid that important constitutional rights are involved," he said emphatically.
Saturday's session began with testimony by phone from Reno, where signature-gatherers for another group said they were still being illegally impeded as they tried to drum up support at the bus depot despite the temporary restraining order Cory issued on June 4 and an explanatory e-mail Cory sent to the building's managers about the provisions of the order.
The Legislature passed a statute in 2001 stating that signatures can be gathered at any public building any time it is open, with the exception of a grade school. Janine Hansen and Christopher Hansen, who are siblings of lawyer Joel Hansen, gave impassioned testimony on Saturday about their recent experiences trying to exercise this right.
Janine Hansen, the northern Nevada director of Nevadans for Sound Government, was arrested last month at the Reno bus depot when she refused to leave the property or sign a form because she claimed that signing the form would waive her constitutional right.
The arrest disrupted the group's campaign, Janine Hansen said, by taking her away from her work coordinating the effort and by demoralizing and intimidating the volunteers. At one point she became so heated in denouncing "penny-ante government bureaucrats" that the judge told her to stop and compose herself.
Christopher Hansen was similarly excited as he described his repeated confrontations at UNLV and several offices of the Department of Motor Vehicles. Officials there refused to designate an area for the petitioners or told them to carry a letter of permission, both acts that Joel Hansen said violated the law and the constitution.
The group says it might be able to gather the remaining signatures it needs if given 60 more days. The deadline for the "Ax the Tax" petition was May 18, while the one on government employees in the Legislature must be turned in by Tuesday.
The group was about 6,500 signatures short of the required total for the tax referendum. Members told the court they had more than 30,000 of the 51,134 signatures needed for Tuesday's deadline.
But Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax told the court that petitioners will probably need much more than that because 30 percent of petition signatures are usually inadmissible. Petition signers must be registered voters and may sign only once.
Lomax testified to the workload of the registrars and county clerks who are responsible for putting on elections and gave a step-by-step account of the lengthy process that leads to a petition appearing on the ballot.
While it might seem that there is a lot of time between June and November, counties' already overextended workers must count thousands of petition signatures, verify that they are acceptable, assign and oversee committees to write arguments for and against each measure, translate everything into Spanish, proofread it, and print it in a booklet that this year is likely to exceed 100 pages, Lomax said.
This year, the presidential election will mean higher than usual voter turnout, and a federal election law passed in the aftermath of the 2000 election is being implemented. Counties are trying to put in place new voting machines that now exist only as a prototype, Lomax said.
"This is immensely more complicated than it has been in the past, and the last thing in the world we want to do is take away from our ability to throw everything we have at it," Lomax said. If a petition came in 60 days past the normal deadline, the situation might reach the breaking point and the ballot might not be ready by Nov. 2, he said.
"I am letting the citizens down if I lead you to believe we can take on anything else," Lomax said. "We are stretched to the absolute limit. We have gone to the Legislature three times to get more time and we can't get them to address this issue. I'm afraid at some point there is going to be a recount or a contested election that will prove that it's (the process) broken."
But under questioning from Joel Hansen, Lomax said it was at least theoretically possible that a petition could make it onto the ballot if it were turned in by July 20.
Ronda Moore, deputy secretary of state for elections, also testified that the elections might collapse if the time frame was altered. Because of the new machines, she said, election workers in the counties "are freaking out. It is a very difficult time."
The workers, she said, are "disbelieving and horrified and afraid...that they are going to fail."
She added, "The general election is hanging by a thread for various reasons, and we all in the state have to band together and work as hard as we can."
But Judge Cory asked both Lomax and Moore a lot of detailed questions about the possibility of extending the deadline and whether it was technically feasible to count signatures and draft pro and con arguments at the same time. Joel Hansen interpreted the judge's curiosity as a favorable signal that the extension might be granted.
"I think he is going to give us until July 20," Hansen said after Saturday's proceedings. "If we are able to do it (collect the needed signatures) in that much time, it would be a miracle. But it's not impossible."
As Saturday's session lengthened, Cory decided to hear only very brief closing arguments and no defense witnesses except Lomax and Moore. To save time, Deputy Attorney General Kimberly Buchanan, representing the DMV, and Patterson of UNLV agreed to submit written affidavits from their witnesses and briefs of their arguments.
Cory said he would issue his decision by the end of the day today.
Sun reporter Matt Pordum contributed to this story.
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