*Carson City, Nevada*     " A review of a petition to legalize small amounts of marijuana shows a lack of enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot." Secretary of State Dean Heller said Wednesday.

Heller said the marijuana petition contained 49,412 names, of the 51,227 minimum needed.

The examination was prompted following U.S. District Judge Jim Mahan's recent ruling against a state requirement that a petition must qualify with the signatures of at least 10 percent of voters in 13 of the state's 17 counties.

Heller ordered county clerks to verify all the signatures attached to the petition. The marijuana initiative was sponsored by the Committee to Regulate and Control Marijuana and would have legalized possession of up to 1 ounce of marijuana by adults in Nevada.

"We expected this would happen but we just didn't expect it would be such a large margin," said Jennifer Knight a committee spokeswoman . She added the loss of several hundred signatures just in the Reno area "sends up a red flag."

But Knight also referred to a pending case in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that could revive the marijuana petition. She said it's now about 1,900 signatures short of the minimum needed - and a victory in the federal appeals court would add more than that just from the Las Vegas area.