A Flathead District Court judge on Tuesday denied a request to add an anti-marijuana initiative to the November ballot, finding the initiative sponsor failed to gather enough petition signatures for the measure.

After hearing arguments and testimony on Friday, Judge Heidi Ulbricht found that Steve Zabawa, the lead sponsor for Initiative 176, did not produce enough evidence to support his claim that Flathead County election officials lost thousands of petition signatures earlier this year.

“Without the requisite number of verified signatures, the Secretary of State does not have a clear legal duty to place I-176 on the ballot,” Ulbricht wrote. “The court consequently cannot issue a writ of mandamus compelling the Secretary of State to place I-176 on the 2016 ballot.”

Initiative 176 sought to align Montana’s classification of illegal drugs with federal law, which would have effectively shut down the state’s medical marijuana program.

If the initiative could not be added to this year’s ballot, Zabawa had requested the court consider placing it on the 2018 ballot. Ulbricht also denied that request, writing in her order that no signatures had been collected for a 2018 initiative campaign.

The Montana Secretary of State’s office in July found that Initiative 176 had fallen 4,137 signatures short of the 24,175 signatures needed to be put to a statewide vote on Election Day.

Alleging that more than 3,000 signatures had been wrongly rejected by county election offices around the state and that the Flathead County Elections Department had lost another 2,588 signatures, Zabawa earlier this month asked the court for an emergency order compelling the measure’s addition to the ballot as well as another search of the Flathead County election offices.

During Friday’s hearing, Flathead County election official Monica Eisenzimer testified that she and two other county employees performed a thorough search of the office spaces used by the department once the matter was brought to her attention.

Reached by phone Wednesday, Zabawa vowed to press forward with other efforts to curtail the state’s medical marijuana program, which he believes went beyond the intent of the 2004 voter initiative that legalized the drug’s medical use in Montana.

“We’ll do everything we can to have I-182 not get passed,” he said, referring to a ballot initiative to repeal restrictions placed on the program by the 2011 Montana Legislature. “We’re not against the medical use of marijuana, we’re just against the green-card program of how to distribute it.”

He added that Safe Montana might push for a similar initiative in 2018, possibly in the form of a constitutional amendment.

Reporter Sam Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.