Opponents and supporters of the Arkansas Abortion Amendment gather at the State Capitol on Friday, July 5, 2024. (Tess Vrbin/Arkansas Advocate)
Required minimum is 90,704; supporters say “optimism remains alive but cautious” while waiting for legal guidance
By Tess Vrbin, Arkansas Advocate
The Arkansas Secretary of State’s office counted 87,675 signatures collected by unpaid volunteers in support of a proposed constitutional amendment that would create a limited right to abortion, according to a sworn affidavit filed Thursday with the Arkansas Supreme Court.
The court had ordered the secretary of state to count the signatures after the ballot question committee supporting the Arkansas Abortion Amendment filed a complaint seeking the court ruling. The high court gave the state until Monday to complete the count.
The next steps will be up to the Supreme Court because it has not ruled on other aspects of the ballot question committee’s complaint nor on Attorney General Tim Griffin’s motion to dismiss the complaint.
Proposed amendments need 90,704 signatures from registered voters to qualify for the statewide November ballot. Arkansans for Limited Government (AFLG), the ballot question committee supporting the amendment, said it submitted 101,525 signatures to Secretary of State John Thurston’s office on the July 5 deadline.
Thurston said July 10 that his office would not count the signatures because AFLG did not submit required documents related to paid canvassers, therefore rendering invalid more than 14,000 signatures and leaving the remaining signatures below the required minimum.
Lauren Cowles, AFLG’s executive director, filed a complaint with the Arkansas Supreme Court on July 16, asking the court to order Thurston to count the signatures. Cowles said the ballot question committee did in fact submit the required accompanying documents to Thurston’s office multiple times, including on July 5.
State law requires an affidavit identifying paid canvassers by name and proof that the ballot question committee explained to canvassers the state’s laws for soliciting signatures and provided them with the Secretary of State’s initiatives and referenda handbook before they started canvassing.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court ordered Thurston to count the signatures collected by volunteer canvassers by 9 a.m. Monday. Leslie Bellamy, the Secretary of State’s office’s director of elections, said in Thursday’s affidavit that she oversaw the count of 87,675 signatures.
Bellamy said there were 912 signatures “on petition parts that do not indicate whether the canvasser was volunteer or paid,” meaning she was “unable to determine” whether they belonged in the court-ordered total. If the 912 signatures were collected by volunteers, the total would be 88,587.
Thurston wrote in his July 10 letter to AFLG that his office counted 14,143 signatures from paid canvassers. The numbers in Thursday’s affidavit bring the total number of signatures submitted on July 5 up to 102,730, more than 1,200 above AFLG’s estimate.
Cowles said in the July 16 legal filing that AFLG’s internal signature count was likely lower than the actual count. The group estimated that unpaid canvassers collected 87,382 signatures, almost 300 fewer than the secretary of state’s count. AFLG also said the total amount of signatures submitted met the qualifying minimum of 3% of voters in 53 counties, three more counties than required by law.
Next steps uncertain
AFLG said in a statement Thursday that it appreciated Thurston’s office fulfilling the court’s order.
“Our optimism remains alive but cautious as we wait for the Arkansas Supreme Court to issue further guidance,” the group said.
The ballot question committee filed a motion to fast-track its case and for emergency relief along with its initial legal complaint. The court has not responded to the motion for emergency relief, which would require Thurston to continue the process of verifying the voter registration status of the people who signed the petition while the legal case is still pending.
Sponsors of proposed ballot measures can be allowed more time to submit additional signatures if the initial submission contains valid signatures from registered voters equal to at least 75% of the overall required number of signatures and 75% of the required number from at least 50 counties.
When asked Thursday afternoon whether AFLG was likely to be granted a cure period, Thurston spokesperson Jaime Land said the issue “is an ongoing legal matter” and the office awaits “further instruction from the Supreme Court.”
Griffin filed a motion to dismiss AFLG’s lawsuit on Friday, arguing that Thurston “correctly rejected” AFLG’s submission because the group failed to submit the proper paperwork.
AFLG’s attorney, Peter Shults, filed a response to the motion Monday. Shults argued that noncompliance with the paperwork requirements alone does not invalidate an entire petition or any part of it.
The Supreme Court has yet to rule on Griffin’s motion, which says AFLG is not entitled to a cure period. Griffin reiterated this in a statement Thursday saying the court “confirmed that the abortion advocates did not turn in enough qualifying signatures to meet the statutory threshold for a cure period.”
AFLG disagreed in its statement.
“As we’ve made clear since July 10, when the Secretary of State unlawfully attempted to disqualify the Amendment, we are confident that, given the facts of this case and the law, the Amendment should move forward to the next stage of the certification process,” the group said. “We believe that the voices of more than 102,000 Arkansans deserve to be heard.”
If the Arkansas Abortion Amendment makes it to the ballot and is approved by voters in November, it would not allow government entities to “prohibit, penalize, delay or restrict abortion services within 18 weeks of fertilization.”
The proposal would also permit abortion services in cases of rape, incest, a fatal fetal anomaly or to “protect the pregnant female’s life or physical health,” and it would nullify any of the state’s existing “provisions of the Constitution, statutes and common law” that conflict with it.
Abortion has been illegal in Arkansas, except to save the pregnant person’s life, since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
The Arkansas Advocate is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to tough, fair daily reporting and investigative journalism that holds public officials accountable and focuses on the relationship between the lives of Arkansans and public policy.
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