Abortion amendment supporters ask Arkansas Supreme Court to overturn Secretary of State’s rejection

Supporters of a proposed Arkansas constitutional amendment to create a limited right to abortion asked the state Supreme Court on Tuesday to order Secretary of State John Thurston to count the more than 101,000 signatures submitted July 5 with the goal of putting the measure on the November ballot.

Thurston rejected the proposed amendment on July 10, claiming that the ballot question committee, Arkansans for Limited Government, did not submit legally required accompanying paperwork with the petitions, therefore rendering invalid the signatures collected by paid canvassers.

AFLG’s attorneys filed a motion to expedite the case along with Tuesday’s complaint, asking the Supreme Court for a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction overruling Thurston’s decision not to count the signatures.

“The Secretary’s unlawful rejection of AFLG’s initiative petition prevents the people of Arkansas from exercising their right to adopt, or reject, the Amendment,” the committee said in a statement Tuesday. “This Court should correct the Secretary’s error and reaffirm Arkansas’s motto, Regnat Populus, The People Rule.”

The committee said Thursday it 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.

Chris Powell, Thurston’s spokesman, provided the Arkansas Advocate last week with all the documents AFLG submitted July 5 upon request. The documents include a list of paid canvassers, with a stamp from the Secretary of State’s office indicating it was filed July 5.

AFLG submitted a “Sponsor Affidavit” to Thurston’s office June 27, testifying to the signature collection education portion of the law. The affidavit was included in Tuesday’s court documents.

“This was not the first time that AFLG had submitted a Sponsor Affidavit and accompanying list of paid canvassers—it was approximately the seventeenth time,” AFLG executive director Lauren Cowles’ complaint states. “Beginning on or around May 8, 2024, AFLG submitted the Sponsor Affidavit and accompanying paid canvasser list whenever it added paid canvassers.”

In a Thursday letter to Thurston, Cowles gave him a deadline of Monday to confirm “that the submission of the initiative petition facially contains the required number of signatures and that your office is proceeding to verify all of the submitted signatures.”

Thurston responded in a Monday letter, saying his “position remains unchanged.”

“The law requires ‘the person filing the petitions’ to ‘also submit’ a statement ‘signed by the sponsor,’” Thurston wrote. “…You claim that an affidavit submitted on June 27, 2024, fulfills these requirements. It does not.”

Thurston claimed the document was not “signed by the sponsor.” The affidavit, included in Cowles’ complaint, was signed by paid canvasser Allison Clark and was submitted with a list of paid canvassers.

The group added 74 more paid canvassers, totaling more than 250, between June 27 and July 5, according to the documents AFLG submitted July 5 and which Powell provided to the Advocate.

Thurston’s Monday letter also stated the law requires the sponsor affidavit to be submitted at the same time as the petitions, meaning he could not accept the June 27 affidavit with the petitions submitted July 5.

AFLG’s July 5 submitted documents provided by Powell include a 691-page file with signed affidavits from all of AFLG’s paid canvassers making the same testimony as Clark did in her declaration. The dates on the affidavits range from April to early July.

“At the filing [on July 5], the Secretary’s attorneys and representatives assured Cowles that she had filed the necessary paperwork with her submission,” the lawsuit states.

Cure period

Cowles argued in the complaint that Thurston’s office owes AFLG “an opportunity to cure or correct any perceived deficiencies in its submission” rather than rejecting it entirely.

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.

Constitutional amendments need 90,704 signatures to qualify for the ballot. AFLG said it submitted a total of 101,525 signatures and met the qualifying minimum of 3% of voters in 53 counties.

“This number of signatures was a conservative count by AFLG,” Cowles’ complaint states. “The number of signatures actually submitted to the Secretary by petitioners was likely higher than that number.”

Thurston said last week that his office would not count and validate the 87,382 signatures collected by unpaid volunteers since the number did not meet the required minimum after his office declared invalid the 14,143 signatures collected by paid canvassers.

Cowles said Thursday that Thurston’s office has a responsibility to count all the signatures regardless of their validity, especially since none of the conditions listed in state law that would justify Thurston refusing to count signatures at all were among his reasons for rejecting the amendment. She made the same argument in Tuesday’s complaint.

Thurston’s office has until Aug. 5 to count signatures for proposed ballot measures and until Aug. 22 to certify the measures for the November ballot.

“Petitioners pray that this Court… Order that, if proceedings in this action have not terminated in time for the full certification and correction process to occur before the deadline to certify initiatives for the November 2024 ballot, then the Secretary must certify the Amendment for the November 2024 General Election ballot,” Cowles’ complaint states.

Supporters of the Arkansas Abortion Amendment began collecting signatures in January. The proposed amendment 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 amendment’s supporters faced a “Decline to Sign” effort encouraging voters not to sign petitions for the amendment. The effort was led by anti-abortion groups Arkansas Right to Life and the Family Council, the latter of which posted on its website in June a list of AFLG’s 79 paid canvassers at the time.

AFLG called the post attempted intimidation; the Family Council has since removed the list from the post but has kept it publicly available on its political action committee website. Acquiring and publishing the list is legal under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.

This story was originally published by the Arkansas Advocate