Wonder if they were made from hemp.UPDATE: A spokesperson for WestNet says that the ballot initiative petitions will be returned to the signers. Details after the jump. The organizers of a ballot initiative to legalize marijuana say that detectives from the West Sound Narcotics Enforcement Team (WestNet) confiscated more than just an 8-year-old girl’s pocket money during last week’s drug raids. Sensible Washington spokesperson Phillip Dawdy (a former Seattle Weekly staffer) claims investigators also took a stack of signed petitions from the offices of North End Club 420, the medical marijuana dispensary raided by WestNet last week. WestNet has not responded to an inquiry from the Weekly, but Dawdy says WestNet officials have confirmed that they have petitions in evidence, though there’s some dispute over how many. Dawdy puts the number at 200. WestNet, he says, claims they only have two. No matter the number, law enforcement officials are not required to return those documents. Katie Blinn, assistant director of elections for the Secretary of State, explains that signed petitions are the responsibility of their circulators. “There are a variety of reasons why a petition never makes it to the Secretary of State’s office, she explains. “This might be one of the more bizarre ones, but ultimately there’s nothing to compel law enforcement to release them if they think they have some value as evidence.”As each petition includes the names and addresses of its signer, Dawdy worries that this new “evidence” will lead to harassment. “We don’t want law enforcement to go sniffing around the signees,” he says, echoing concerns regarding releasing names of those who signed the gay rights referendum last year, an issue that’s currently before the U.S. Supreme Court. Dawdy says that investigators have agreed to return the originals. But the cops, he says, will likely make photocopies. According to Blinn, that too is legal.WestNet spokesperson Deputy Scott Wilson of the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Department confirms that a number of petitions were “inadvertently” taken into evidence during last week’s raid. He can’t say how many, only that they’ve since been set aside from the other evidence gathered at the scene. Detectives are now in the process of returning them to the signers, he says. As for Dawdy’s other worry, Wilson says that detectives have no plans to make photocopies of the petitions. “That’s has to do with legislative issues,” he explains, bluntly. “We don’t care.”