On election night, many of us watched the polls for hours waiting for the final results of not only the presidential election, but state ballot initiatives as well. Out of all the initiatives hoping to legalize marijuana, the only one we saw fail that night was Proposition 205 in Arizona, which would have legalized adult use of marijuana and created a commercial industry to tax and regulate the plant. Unfortunately, by the end of the night they called the loss with a 51.8% “No” vote – leaving many Arizonans disappointed.
However, while the rest of the state was quick to make the call on election night, not all the ballots had been counted yet and due to the closeness of the race, activists and those running the Yes on 205 campaign have refused to say they lost until every last vote is counted. At this point, according to the Arizona Secretary of State website, Prop 205 lost by only 85,228 votes – and the number of votes that have yet to be counted far exceeds this, so there is a very slim chance that Prop 205 could still pass when the count is finalized.
The only votes left to be counted are from Maricopa County and include both early votes and provisional votes – all of which will have to be verified before they can even be counted. There were 167,000 votes yet to be counted as of Friday evening, and if more than that 85,228 are “yes” votes then Proposition 205 would have in fact won in this election and activists would have been right not to call the race too soon. However, it is still a pretty long shot, but not entirely impossible.
At this point, it comes down to those votes in Maricopa to determine whether or not Prop 205 passed or failed on November 8th. Sadly with such a large number of “yes” votes to fill, it seems unlikely as they would need over 75% of the uncounted votes to be in their favor for it to pass – but we will keep our hopes up until the very end. After all, Maine’s ballot initiative, Question 1, passed by less than 3,000 votes and while it is subject to recount, the chances of a change in the outcome are slim.
This is EXACTLY what happened with medical marijuana here in Arizona. It was reported to have failed then magically passed a week later. On the night of the election we counted and recorded 3. 4 million votes in Az but we are still not done counting (and filling out registration forms?) 150,000 Early mail in ballots. Welcome to the most corrupt state i the union.
Dude as much as I want to be like “Yeah!! What he said^!!” I just can’t. You are so epically off on numbers there, and the reason behind the hold up back years ago. Let’s get you all sorted out here. Medical Marijuana was technically legal in the state of Arizona for 14 years before the bill was written correctly to protect medical patients from arrest, and to allow a card to be obtained in a more suitable fashion. Including the attempt to legalize small amounts back in 2002 there have been 6 attempts to get it to where it stood in 2010 with medical marijuana being legal with a medical card. The initiative was passed in 2010, although there may have been some length in between the vote and the count back then, it was a yes right off and stayed that way. The vote was within 2% and 1,678,351 votes were cast that were accepted as valid votes. The vote was on the wire, but they never said it wasn’t going to pass in 2010. I still have full hope, but there is not 3.4m voters and there is 2m votes cast this year with just over 110k votes left to count and still needing 82k votes as a “YES” vote to seal the legalization of it. Possible, but so highly unlikely.
King is right. There is such corruption in the Arizona medical marijuana program. If 205 last minute votes go yes votes we will know for sure it was fraud. The trend of votes is no. If 75 % of last votes go to yes then someone fudged the vote. It absurd to imagine all previous voted are 53% no then last votes are 75% yes.
This is not actually evidence for corruption. It’s like assuming the weatherman is corrupt because an 80% chance of rain forecast doesn’t come true. (There’s a 20% chance it could be sunny, which is not nothing.) As long as there’s a chance thats greater than 0%, this could happen, and the system could be completely uncorrupt.
What you are observing is an unlikely event actually occurring. Unlikely events are exactly that, unlikely, but they’re not impossible. The cubs not winning the world series for 100 years is unlikely, but it happened. That doesn’t mean the MLB is corrupt.
You shouldn’t cry wolf unless you have really solid evidence that there is actually a wolf. In this case, you shouldn’t accuse AZ of being corrupt without really solid evidence of corruption. Watergate was really solid evidence of corruption. An unlikely event occurring is not solidenough of evidence to make that serious of a claim.
Hans people who smoke are to smart to stand in lines for hours to vote and not 75 percent said no only 51.8 percent did you should learn how to read the article just say that 75 percent of the 150000 early ballots would need to be yes
Does anyone know the outcome yet?