The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the state’s rejection of signature petitions for an abortion-rights ballot initiative, blocking the proposal from going to voters in November.
The decision dashed hopes of organizers who submitted the petitions that the constitutional amendment measure would be brought to a vote in the predominantly Republican state, where many high-ranking leaders are in office. proclaim their opposition to abortion.
Election officials said Arkansans for Limited Government, the group behind the measure, failed to properly submit paperwork for the signature gatherers it hired. The group disputed that claim and argued it should have been given more time to provide the additional required documentation.
“We find that the Secretary properly refused to count signatures collected by paid canvassers because the sponsor failed to file the paid canvassers’ training certification,” the court said in a 4-3 decision.
Following the US Supreme Court decision in 2022 Remove the national right to abortionEfforts were made to have voters decide the issue state by state.
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 allowed the procedure later in cases of rape, incest, threats to the woman’s health or life, or if the fetus was unlikely to survive birth. It would not have created a constitutional right to abortion.
The referendum proposal has not received support from national abortion rights groups such as Family planning because it would have banned abortion after 20 weeks, which is earlier than in other states where it remains legal.
If all those signatures had been verified, the more than 101,000 signatures filed by the July 5 deadline would have been enough to authorize the election. The threshold was 90,704 signatures from registered voters and at least 50 counties.
In a court filing, election officials said 87,675 of the signatures submitted were collected by campaign volunteers. Election officials said they could not determine whether 912 of the signatures came from volunteers or paid canvassers.
Arkansans for Limited Government and election officials disagreed over whether the petitions complied with a 2013 state law requiring campaigns to submit statements identifying each paid canvasser by name and confirming that the rules for collecting signatures had been explained to them.
Supporters of the measure said they followed the law when it came to documentation, including providing affidavits identifying each paid collector. They also argued that pro-abortion petitions were treated differently than other initiative campaigns this year, pointing to similar filings by two other groups.
State records show that the Abortion Campaign did indeed submit a signed declaration on June 27 that included a list of paid canvassers and a statement that the petition rules had been explained to them. In addition, the July 5 submission included sworn statements from each paid canvasser acknowledging that the group had provided them with all the rules and regulations required by law.
The state argued in court that this documentation was not compliant because it was not signed by someone from the canvassing company but by the campaign organization itself. The state said the declaration should also be submitted at the same time as the petitions.
