The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the state’s rejection of signature collections for an abortion rights referendum, preventing the proposal from going to voters in November.
The ruling dashed the hopes of the organizers who had submitted the petitions to pass the amendment in the predominantly Republican state, where many top politicians announce their opposition to abortion.
Election officials said the group behind the measure, Arkansans for Limited Government, failed to properly file paperwork about the signature gatherers it hired. The group disputed that claim and argued it should have been given more time to submit all the additional documents it needed.
“We conclude that the Secretary was correct in refusing to count the signatures collected by paid poll workers because the sponsor failed to submit the training certificate for paid poll workers,” the court said in a 4-3 ruling.
Following the US Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 Abolition of the nationwide right to abortionThere were efforts to let voters in each individual state decide this question.
Arkansas currently prohibits abortion at any time during pregnancy, unless the woman’s life is in danger due to a medical emergency.
The proposed amendment would have banned laws prohibiting abortion in the first 20 weeks of pregnancy and permitted the procedure later in cases of rape, incest, threats to the woman’s health or life, or when the fetus would not likely survive birth. It would not have created a constitutional right to abortion.
The ballot proposal did not receive support from national abortion rights groups such as Planned Parenthood This would have still made it possible to ban abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy, earlier than in other states where they are still legal.
If they had all been verified, the more than 101,000 signatures submitted by the July 5 deadline would have been enough to get it on the ballot. The minimum requirement was 90,704 signatures from registered voters in at least 50 counties.
In an earlier filing with the court, election officials said 87,675 of the submitted signatures were collected by campaign volunteers. Election officials said they could not determine whether 912 of the signatures were from volunteers or paid poll workers.
Arkansas for Limited Government and election officials disagreed over whether the petitions complied with a 2013 state law that requires campaign teams to file statements identifying each paid poll worker and certifying that they were told the rules for collecting signatures.
Supporters of the measure said they followed the law in documentation, including affidavits identifying each paid collector. They also argued that the abortion petitions were being handled differently this year than other initiatives, pointing to similar requests from two other groups.
State records show that the abortion campaign filed a signed affidavit on June 27 that included a list of paid poll workers and a statement that the rules of the petition had been explained to them. In addition, the July 5 filing included affidavits from all paid staff members confirming that the group had provided them with all rules and regulations required by law.
The state argued in court that this documentation did not meet the requirements because it was signed by the initiative itself, not by someone from the campaign firm. The state said the statement must be submitted along with the petitions.
