A lawsuit seeking to put a proposal to legalize abortion in Arkansas on the November ballot has been expanded to add more plaintiffs. On Tuesday, two other ballot question groups had their request to intervene as parties in the suit granted.
Arkansans For Limited Government has been working since February to put an amendment on the 2024 ballot legalizing abortion up to the 18th week of pregnancy. The group collected over 100,000 signatures, more than the over 90,000 needed to get their proposal on the ballot.
Secretary of State John Thurston said about 14,000 signatures collected by paid canvassers had to be thrown out. He said the group did not turn in the proper paid canvasser paperwork. It's unclear if this is true, as FOIA requests show documents similar to the ones he claims were missing were turned in. Thurston then said, affidavits submitted by the group were signed by the representatives of AFLG, which are the wrong people.
The AFLG took his decision to the Arkansas Supreme Court. They ruled that unpaid signatures had to be counted. A final tally of unpaid signatures totaled 87,675, below the threshold but enough to grant the group a 30-day cure period. The ongoing lawsuit is over whether they should be granted the cure period.
On Tuesday, two other ballot question committees submitted a 120-page brief asking to intervene in the lawsuit. The motion was jointly filed by Local Voters in Charge and Arkansans for Patient Access. Both groups have worked to put amendments on the ballot for 2024; Local Voters in Charge has worked to pass an amendment to allow local input into a casino in Pope County, while Arkansans for Patient Access is trying to broaden access to medical marijuana.
A motion to intervene is granted when a group that is not involved in a lawsuit is allowed to join a suit. The argument is that, even though they are not involved in the suit, the outcome directly affects them.
Hans Stiritz, a spokesman for Local Voters in Charge, explained the group's decision to join the lawsuit in a press release. He said Thurston's choice in throwing out signatures "has the potential to impact LVC’s effort to protect local voters’ rights."
He took issue with Thurston's claim that the affidavits the group submitted were incorrectly signed by a representative. He said barring a representative of a group from filling out forms is similar to not allowing a lawyer to fill out forms on behalf of their client
Stiritz says he is personally opposed to abortion. He said the group believes the secretary of state is: "creating new interpretations of law never before applied and glaringly inconsistent only creates further risks for the State of Arkansas, its citizens, and the democratic process.”
The joint motion calls Thurston’s decision to throw out an “eleventh-hour interpretation” of the law which could “prevent the proposed amendments from reaching the ballot in November.”
It also described it an “unconstitutional interference with the people’s right in procuring petitions.”
The motion was granted by the state Supreme Court, although, Chief Justice John Dan Kemp as well as Justices Rhonda Wood and J. Cody Hiland would have denied the request.
