The Arkansas Supreme Court recently upheld the state’s rejection of signed petitions for an abortion rights ballot initiative, preventing the proposal from being placed before voters in November. The ruling was based on the group, Arkansans for Limited Government, failing to comply with state law by submitting documentation regarding paid signature gatherers separately rather than in a single bundle. This decision effectively changed the state’s initiative law and deprived voters of the opportunity to vote on the issue, according to dissenting justices.
Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 to remove the nationwide right to abortion, there has been a trend of states putting abortion issues before voters. Montana recently became the eighth state to do so this fall, with abortion supporters winning in all seven states that have voted on abortion questions since Roe v. Wade was overturned. Despite the setback in Arkansas, Arkansans for Limited Government remains determined to continue their efforts and expressed outrage at the court’s ruling, promising to remember it in November.
The proposed amendment would have prohibited laws banning abortion in the first 20 weeks of gestation and allowed the procedure later on in cases of rape, incest, threats to the woman’s health or life, or if the fetus would be unlikely to survive birth. However, the ballot proposal did not receive support from national abortion rights groups like Planned Parenthood because it would still have allowed abortion to be banned after 20 weeks. The current law in Arkansas bans abortion at any time during a pregnancy, except in cases where the woman’s life is endangered due to a medical emergency.
The more than 101,000 signatures submitted by Arkansans for Limited Government on the state’s July 5 deadline would have been enough to qualify for the ballot if verified. However, election officials determined that only signatures collected by volunteers could be counted, falling short of the required threshold of 90,704 signatures from registered voters across a minimum of 50 counties. The group and election officials disagreed on whether the campaign’s petitions complied with a 2013 state law requiring details about paid canvassers, with the court ruling in favor of election officials.
Supporters of the measure maintained that they followed the law with their documentation, including identifying each paid gatherer. They argued that the abortion petitions were being handled differently than other initiative campaigns this year, pointing to similar filings by two other groups. The court’s majority cited a lack of organization in the submission process as the reason for rejecting the signatures gathered by paid canvassers, further reinforcing the decision to uphold the state’s rejection. Despite this setback, the group remains determined to continue their fight for abortion rights in Arkansas.
