Organizations canvassing for signatures across Arkansas carried their petitions across the finish line on Friday. Petitions for seven different initiatives have been in circulation this spring, aiming to appear on the November ballot. Their goals range from reforming medical marijuana and abortion laws to easing classification requirements for vintage cars.
Chris Powell, spokesman for Secretary of State John Thurston, says in his 11 years on the job, he has never seen this many different initiatives.
“I think the most we’ve done in recent years has been four at a time,” Powell said. “We might potentially have seven today, that’s why we’ve hired 90 people to assist the office. That’s the most temps that we have hired before.”
Powell says the temp workers will be poring over the signatures for the next 30 days, with two different shifts working 12 hours a day.
The secretary of state's office will be allowed to throw out signatures if the information does not match what is on the voter’s registration documents. If petitions have 75% of the needed signatures, there will be a 30 day cure period allowing for more time to gather signatures.
Abortion
Representatives for the Arkansas Abortion Amendment say they have collected enough signatures to put their measure on the ballot. Arkansans for Limited Government lined the hallways of the State Capitol Friday to cheer as the boxes of signatures were delivered to the secretary of state's office. Supporters chanted “this is what democracy looks like.”
A representative for the group signed an affidavit saying they have collected 101,525 signatures for the amendment, well over the 90,704 needed to put abortion on the ballot in November. Spokeswoman Gennie Diaz said they have collected signatures from 53 out of Arkansas’ 75 counties, three more than they needed.
If placed on the ballot and passed by voters, abortion will be legalized in Arkansas up to the 18th week of pregnancy.
The group collected the signatures with very few financial resources; many national pro-choice groups declined to fund the amendment. Arkansans for Limited Government was only able to pay some canvassers, so most of the signature collection came from volunteers. Over 300 volunteers have been working to collect signatures for the amendment since February.
“The last few months have been brutal,” volunteer Alison Guthrie said. “It was freezing in February, and the last few months have been heat exhaustion.”
Guthrie said she was happy the group was able to make it.
“It's a testament to what Arkansas is actually capable of. The volunteers kept showing up and showing up and showing up.”
About 22,000 of the signatures came in over the last four days. Diaz said a lot of signers “waited until the last minute.”
The group plans to keep collecting signatures to create a buffer if they ask to have a cure period.
A separate group called Decline to Sign held a modest counter-protest at the signature celebration event. Representatives from the Arkansas Family Council were also in attendance. The group says they plan to challenge the abortion amendment in court.
Family Council President Jerry Cox said “the fight hasn't even started.”
“This does away with our common sense abortion laws,” he said of the proposed amendment. “Like saying you have to have parental consent to get an abortion.”
He said he wanted to better understand “if the law was broken when these signatures were gathered.”
Cox said it had been “indicated” to him that people had “inadvertently signed the abortion petition without being told exactly what it would do.”
Diaz, with Arkansas for Limited Government, called this allegation “absolutely false.”
“Attached to every single petition is the amendment itself,” she said, adding “please go read it. We are very proud of that language.”
Cox said he also wanted to see if the language in the proposal could stand up to legal scrutiny. As with all ballot titles for proposed amendments, Attorney General Tim Griffin approved the abortion proposal's language, meaning he deemed it able to be understood by voters at the ballot box.
Casinos
A push to repeal the Arkansas Racing Commission's authority to issue a casino license in Pope County has garnered over 162,000 signatures, according to Hans Stiritz, spokesman for Local Voters in Charge. The proposal would also require local voter approval for new casino licenses in the state.
Stiritz says their success represents a desire for more local control in Arkansas communities.
“In an issue as important as commercialized gambling and casino gambling, the decisions on whether those projects should be developed in specific communities should be left to those communities. And that’s really all our amendment does.”
Natalie Ghidotti, vice chair of the rival group Investing in Arkansas, disputes that summary of the proposal, saying its true purpose is to revoke the casino license in Pope County.
“While sufficient signatures may have been turned in, this group — solely backed by a rejected out-of-state casino operator, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma — has spent the last several months lying to Arkansans about the true intent of this ballot initiative,” Ghidotti said in a statement.
Arkansas voters approved an amendment in 2018 authorizing four casinos to operate within the state. The license for Pope County was issued to Mississippi-based Gulfside Casino Partnership in 2020, but was revoked following a protracted legal battle. Last week, the Arkansas Racing Commission voted to award a new license to Cherokee Nation Entertainment, which is now facing a legal challenge.
“This small group wants you to believe their efforts are about a local vote, but in reality it is about revoking the casino license from Pope County — a license awarded just last week by the state of Arkansas to Cherokee Nation Entertainment,” Ghidotti said.
Marijuana
A proposed amendment to reform Arkansas’ medical marijuana laws has gathered over 111,000 signatures, according to the group Arkansans for Patient Access. If passed, the Medical Marijuana Amendment of 2024 would allow patients to grow plants for private use, expand qualifying medical conditions, and allow patient assessments via telemedicine, among other objectives.
Jerry Cox from the conservative Family Council Action Committee says the group plans to challenge the amendment in court.
“The marijuana amendment would drastically expand marijuana in Arkansas. The amendment makes it possible for people to grow and use ‘medical’ marijuana without suffering from a specific medical condition listed in state law. The amendment also repeals restrictions that protect children from marijuana advertisements,” Cox said. “The amendment’s ballot title is so complicated that it fails to explain to the voter exactly how the amendment changes Arkansas’ medical marijuana laws and what effect those changes will have on our state.”
Cox thanked the groups and individuals who are opposing both the abortion and marijuana amendments.
“The campaigns behind these measures paid hundreds of canvassers $30 to $50 an hour to scour the state for signatures. But our network of volunteers working against the abortion amendment and the marijuana amendment have been very successful because they have helped educate Arkansans about these extreme measures.”
Education
While volunteers with For AR Kids were optimistic they’d be able to collect roughly 30,000 signatures in the run-up to Friday’s deadline, the group’s efforts ultimately proved unsuccessful.
The Arkansas Educational Rights Amendment of 2024 would have required private schools receiving state tax dollars to be held to the same accessibility and academic standards as public schools. The proposal was a direct response to the Arkansas LEARNS Act, passed by lawmakers last year, which provides families with tax-funded vouchers to fund their child’s private, religious or homeschool education.
Bill Kopsky with the Arkansas Public Policy Panel chalked their loss up to a lack of resources, not spending enough time on fundraising and a vigorous, well-funded opposition campaign.
“We are disappointed. We’re also really grateful and optimistic. We’re not giving up, and we know most Arkansans won’t either,” he said.
Kopsky said, since March, the group collected 69,968 signatures from every county in Arkansas, meeting the required minimum in 55 counties.
“We organized a statewide network of education and democracy leaders in literally every county in Arkansas, we engaged a broad cross-section of Arkansans in the democratic process, it was based on values and information and data, not partisanship or ideology,” he said. “We educated voters on the ongoing challenges our kids and our schools are facing, and what the real solutions to those challenges are.”
Kopsky says the group will attempt to pass individual aspects of the amendment in the 2025 legislative session, and, if unsuccessful, try once again to place the amendment on the ballot through the petition process.
A statement from rival group Arkansans for Students and Educators celebrated For AR Kids’ defeat.
“Once again, Arkansans have rejected the status quo of the education establishment that has kept us at the bottom for decades,” the statement reads.
“After an overwhelming victory by Governor Sanders in 2022, the sweeping passage of the LEARNS Act, the failure of CAPES, and now the failure of For AR Kids, the message being sent is crystal clear: Arkansans are demanding bold change for our education system - one that empowers parents, puts students first, and starts to pay teachers what they deserve.”
FOIA
An amendment to enshrine the Freedom of Information Act in the state constitution fell short of the needed number of signatures. Arkansas Citizens for Transparency made the announcement Friday afternoon, but did not say how many signatures they had collected in total. In a statement, Arkansas Press Association Executive Director Ashley Kemp Wimberley thanked the volunteers for working to collect signatures.
“It’s been gratifying to see so many people from across the state with no interest
other than believing in open government and the right of any citizen to obtain information willing to work so hard,” she said.
The group says they plan to try to put the measure on the ballot for 2026.
Period products
Volunteers ultimately failed to gather enough signatures to place an effort to rescind Arkansas’ sales tax on diapers and menstrual products on the ballot.
Shannie Jackson, head of the Arkansas Period Poverty Project, said the group collected 43,831 signatures with 19 qualifying counties. Despite not meeting the threshold of 72,563 signatures for initiated acts, Jackson submitted the group’s signatures to the secretary of state’s office just minutes before the 5 o’clock deadline Friday afternoon.
“We’re absolutely going to try again,” Jackson said, wiping away tears. “This is my fourth attempt to remove the ‘pink tax’ here in Arkansas. We’re going to do it again, and I have all these people that are in the room with me today that are going to help me do it.”
Like other unsuccessful petitioners, Jackson vowed to work to repeal the tax in the 2025 legislative session. In the meantime, she says her group will continue their efforts to distribute free period products and educate Arkansans about the menstrual cycle.
“We had a slow start at it, we ended up joining ranks with other petitions. We just didn’t have the volunteers to do it. These other groups have been petitioning for years and years and years, they have the people, they have the community,” she said. “We ran out of time, unfortunately.”
What's Next
Chris Powell with the secretary of state’s office says they will announce when each of the initiatives is certified as soon as they are able, but says he wants to remind voters to study each of the proposals and do their homework before November.
“We have a website, voterview.org, where people can check their voter registration information ahead of time and get sample ballots and things like that. We just want people to continue to be involved and be aware of what they may be voting on in the fall.”
Proposed constitutional amendments needed over 90,000 signatures, while initiated acts needed over 72,000. At least 50 of Arkansas’ 75 counties must also be represented in the signature count. Voter signatures will be counted and matched against those in the voter registration database.
