HELENA, Mont. – The Latest on efforts by an anti-marijuana organization to certify a ballot initiative after the state’s deadline (all times local):

5:30 p.m.

Secretary of State Linda McCulloch says she will not count the 3,200 signatures that anti-marijuana advocates submitted in an attempt to certify a ballot initiative after the deadline.

Safe Montana’s Steve Zabawa says the signatures he turned in Wednesday were wrongly rejected by county officials across the state.

McCulloch says in a letter to Zabawa that her office is not able to tabulate the signatures because the deadline for submittal was July 15.

That leaves Zabawa and his group to seek intervention by the courts. A hearing is scheduled Friday in Flathead County district court on Zabawa’s request to count those signatures and another 2,500 signatures he claims county officials lost.

Time is short. McCulloch says she and her staff will certify the November election ballots on Monday to prepare them for printing.

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11 a.m.

Anti-marijuana advocates plan to present Secretary of State Linda McCulloch with a list of more than 3,200 Montana voters whose signatures they claim were wrongly rejected from a ballot initiative petition.

The advocates will ask McCulloch on Wednesday to certify those signatures as they seek to place their measure on 2016 election ballots before they go for printing.

The measure would repeal Montana’s medical marijuana law and ban any drug that is illegal under federal law. It fell 4,137 signatures and one county short of qualifying for the ballot.

The 3,200 rejected signatures alone wouldn’t be enough to qualify the initiative. So the Safe Montana advocates also are asking a judge to also count 2,588 additional signatures they say Flathead County officials lost.

McCulloch spokeswoman Emily Dean declined to comment, citing the lawsuit.