Arkansas Secretary of State rejects proposed abortion amendment

Arkansas Secretary of State John Thurston rejected the submission of more than 101,000 signatures for a proposed constitutional amendment that would create a limited right to abortion.

The group that submitted the petitions Friday did not submit an affidavit identifying paid canvassers by name, as required by state law, Thurston wrote in a Wednesday letter to Lauren Cowles, executive director of Arkansans for Limited Government, the ballot question committee supporting the proposed amendment.

State law also requires ballot question committees to provide “a copy of the most recent edition of the Secretary of State’s initiatives and referenda handbook to each paid canvasser” and to explain to canvassers the legal requirements for soliciting signatures before canvassing begins.

AFLG did not fulfill these requirements while the sponsors of other proposed ballot measures did, Thurston wrote.

Failure to comply with these requirements invalidates the 14,143 signatures collected by paid canvassers, bringing the total number of valid signatures down from 101,525 to 87,382, Thurston wrote. Proposed constitutional amendments need 90,704 signatures from at least 50 counties to qualify for the statewide ballot.

AFLG said in a statement that its legal team was reviewing Thurston’s letter and would “have more to say shortly.”

The Democratic Party of Arkansas said on X that its members “are in this fight for the long haul.”

“We believe in health care and education that let every woman determine when and if parenthood is right for her,” the party wrote.

Republican elected officials praised Thurston’s rejection of the amendment on X.

“Today the far left pro-abortion crowd in Arkansas showed they are both immoral and incompetent,” Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders wrote.

Attorney General Tim Griffin called the required affidavit “simple and straightforward.”

“Failure to follow such a basic requirement is inexcusable: the #abortion advocates have no one to blame but themselves,” he wrote.

The Arkansas Abortion 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.

AFLG was about 10,000 signatures shy of the minimum at the start of last week, but made a strong effort to gather last-minute signatures, including on Independence Day when an email claiming to be from the organization caused confusion by stating no more signatures were needed. AFLG quickly alerted supporters that the misleading email was not from them and encouraged people to continue signing petitions.

Supporters of the Arkansas Abortion Amendment faced a number of challenges throughout the campaign, including 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 a list of 79 people paid by AFLG to collect signatures.

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