KALAMAZOO —

Backers of the Kalamazoo Coalition for Pragmatic Cannabis Laws may be down but they’re not out.

Just days after the Kalamazoo City Clerk’s office announced the group came-up short in its attempt to get a city charter amendment before voters in November that would have made the possession of 1 ounce or less of marijuana by those 21 and over the “lowest possible priority” for law enforcement, the group said it is planning on hitting the streets again to collect signatures for the reform effort.

The coalition in September will be bringing in volunteers from Ann Arbor with experience in voter registration and petition drives, said Martin Chilcutt, political advisor for the coalition.

“They’ve done this before,” he said. “They know what they’re doing.”

Many of the volunteer signature gatherers in the coalition’s failed first effort to get the reform initiative before voters apparently didn’t.

with them to be filled out by city residents who were not registered to vote, who were to be asked to show their driver’s license to prove they lived in Kalamazoo. Once that occurred, then the volunteer was to ask if they wanted to sign the petition, Chilcutt said.

Apparently, that rarely happened.

Of the

, only 2,017 were those of registered voters in the city, the clerk's office said Friday. The coalition needed 2,752 certified signatures to get the issue on the ballot.

Nearly half of all the signatures on the petition sheets were non-valid. Many had addresses outside of the city, some as far away as Florida.

“They did a terrible job,” Chilcutt said of the volunteers. “It’s totally their fault. Every single volunteer made these errors. They were not doing what they were told to do.”

The 2,017 certified signatures remain valid for one year from the filing date, but state law says the earliest the measure could go before voters is November 2011. Chilcutt said he expects to have the new petition drive completed sometime next month.

Chilcutt said that he would be willing to bring back some of the original volunteers to help in the new effort, but none of them will be paid.

Volunteers in the failed effort got paid $1 per signature, an incentive that got abused, he said. The payment was only to be good for signatures of registered voters in the city, but the coalition’s leadership didn’t have time to go through every signature because they were pressing against the deadline to turn them in.

“They wanted their money,” he said. “I guess they were desperate.”

Chilcutt said he remains undeterred by the setback.

“We feel bad but this gives us more time,” he said. “I’m not a quitter. This is something that is easily repaired. It’s a bump in the road.”