Tobacco tax supporters miss ballot

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- A proposal to more than quadruple Missouri's cigarette tax failed to get enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot, Secretary of State Matt Blunt said Friday.

The ballot proposal would have asked voters to add 55 cents to the state's current tax of 17 cents per pack of cigarettes. Taxes on other tobacco products would have risen by 20 percent.

Supporters had delivered petitions bearing about 130,000 signatures to the secretary of state's office in May, although they were only required by the state constitution to have 78,143.

To secure a place on the ballot, initiatives need signatures from registered voters equal to 5 percent of the votes cast in the 2000 gubernatorial election in six of the nine congressional districts.

Blunt said that more than 2,399 signatures collected in the 2nd Congressional District in suburban St. Louis were invalid, leaving Citizens for a Healthy Missouri 673 signatures short of the 15,143 required in that district.

Wrong places

"They got more signatures than they needed overall but they just didn't get them in the right places," Blunt said. "I would encourage the group to evaluate the facts and the decision that was made by the local election authority."

Brad Ketcher, a spokes-man for Citizens for a Healthy Missouri, said the group was considering its legal options, including a potential lawsuit challenging the decision.

"We're very disappointed at the determination," Ketcher said. "We think there's a high likelihood that this has been wrongly decided, meaning it should have been certified for the ballot."

Not registered voters

Election officials in Lincoln, St. Charles and St. Louis counties submitted reports to Blunt outlining why signatures were rejected. Blunt said he agreed with their reasons. The majority of signatures were rejected because they were collected from people who were not registered to vote.

"There's no obligation to review their findings, but we did, and it appears to us that their analysis is correct," Blunt said.

The report to Blunt said that 260 signatures were rejected in Lincoln County, 953 in St. Charles County and 977 in the portion of St. Louis County in the 2nd Congressional District.

Since last year, Citizens for a Healthy Missouri has raised more than $2.2 million for the campaign and spent more than $1 million, according to campaign finance reports. More than $1.1 million of the money raised came from the Missouri Hospital Association.

The finance reports also show that Citizens for a Healthy Missouri paid $491,000 to National Voter Outreach, a company that was used along with volunteers to gather signatures.