PIERRE, S.D. (AP) — Opponents of South Dakota's new smoking ban have gathered enough petition signatures to put the measure to a statewide public vote next year, a circuit judge ruled Friday.

After hearing testimony in a two-day trial, Circuit Judge Kathleen Trandahl found that opponents of the ban had collected 2,244 more signatures than they needed to force a public vote. She granted the opponents' request to order Secretary of State Chris Nelson to place the smoking ban on the November 2010 ballot.

Nelson and officials of the American Cancer Society, who argued the measure should not be on the ballot, said they will decide whether to appeal Trandahl's ruling to the South Dakota Supreme Court.

Trandahl noted that the secretary of state must decide whether to count signatures based on strict compliance with laws and regulations, but the courts have the discretion to decide when those who gather petition signatures have substantially complied with the laws and rules.

The judge counted more than 2,000 signatures Nelson had thrown out because the notaries public who witnessed the signatures of those who circulated those petition sheets had written incorrect or incomplete dates for when their notary commissions expired. She also counted hundreds of signatures with other technical errors.

In some cases, Trandahl said the challenged signatures met legal requirements. In others, she said signatures would count because circulators and notary publics had substantially complied with the law.

The South Dakota Legislature earlier this year passed a law to ban smoking in bars, video lottery establishments and the casinos in Deadwood. The measure, which would extend a ban that has outlawed smoking in most workplaces and public areas since 2002, was to have taken effect July 1.

But bar and casino owners who contend the ban would drive away customers and interfere with business owners' rights collected 25,400 petition signatures to force a public vote, which would delay the ban from taking effect pending the outcome of the 2010 election.

The American Cancer Society, which promoted the smoking ban, challenged thousands of signatures. Nelson investigated those signatures and eventually ruled that more than 8,800 were invalid.

The ban's opponents then asked the judge to order Nelson to reinstate some signatures and put the referendum on the ballot.

In testimony this week, Nelson said further checking had led him to conclude that ban opponents were only 17 valid signatures short of the 16,776 needed to put it on the ballot. The American Cancer Society argued another 218 signatures counted by Nelson should be declared invalid.

After the judge looked at about two dozen categories of challenged signatures, she found that 19,020 were valid, or 2,244 more than needed to put it on the ballot.

Much of Friday's testimony focused on the failure of notary publics to print correct dates when they witnessed the signatures of those who had circulated petitions. They had missing or incomplete dates for when they notarized the documents or for when their notary commissions expired. About a dozen said they just made a mistake, for example when they gave no year for when they notarized the petitions.

Rapid City lawyer Sara Frankenstein, representing those seeking a public vote on the ban, said state law and prior court decisions say technical errors should not be allowed to invalidate the wishes of people who sign petitions.

"We would be punishing the 25,000 who did everything right for the sins of notaries, and I think that unjust," Frankenstein said.

No one who made the technical errors had any intent of fraud or deceit, Frankenstein said.

But Deputy Attorney General Sherri Sundem Wald said the mistakes made by circulators and notary publics were violations of legal requirements, not just technicalities. "They must get it right and not rely on a court to say close enough," she said.

Sioux Falls lawyer Richard Casey, representing the American Cancer Society, also argued that many of the petitions sheets should be thrown out because notary publics did not make circulators raise their right hands and swear they were telling the truth in signing the sheets.

However, Nelson and a number of notary publics testified they do not believe the law requires them to make people swear an oath in such situations.