At a Monday event in Wisconsin, President Donald Trump recalled former Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) loss in the 2018 election.
“The next time you run, please don’t put marijuana on the ballot at the same time you’re running,” Trump told him. “You brought out like a million people that nobody ever knew were coming out.”
But those who have long monitored such issues say it’s unlikely that cannabis ballot initiatives help or hurt a political party in an election.
“There is no clear indication” that a cannabis reform ballot initiative helps one party or the other, said Matthew Schweich, deputy director with Marijuana Policy Project.
Schweich noted that Wisconsin did not have a statewide ballot initiative in that 2018 election. There were local referendums on the question of legalization, all of them advisory and nonbinding. Schweich also noted that more than 2.5 million people voted in that year’s election. To say that a million of those voters came out of nowhere is incorrect, he said.