From the Arkansas Advocate:
A lawsuit challenging the certification of an anti-casino ballot measure began Tuesday at the Arkansas Supreme Court.
The lawsuit boasts an added layer of interest since the court ruled last week in a 4-3 decision to keep the state’s abortion amendment off the ballot due to a paperwork error. That decision could influence the outcome of the anti-casino measure suit.
Special Master William Wright was selected to hear arguments in the lawsuit, which the Arkansas Canvassing Compliance Committee (ACCC) filed the day after Secretary of State John Thurston approved the Local Voter Control of Casino Gambling Amendment for the November ballot.
The amendment aims to repeal a Pope County casino license and require any new casino built in Arkansas to be approved in a countywide special election before a license is issued. An out-of-state casino operator, Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, donated $5.3 million to the ballot question committee, Local Voters in Charge.
In a petition filed with the court on Aug. 1, ACCC asked that the ballot measure be disqualified based on what it said were fraudulently collected signatures from Local Voters in Charge.
Thurston’s office accepted more than 162,000 signatures from Local Voters in Charge on the submission deadline of July 5. The group turned in signatures from all 75 counties.
ACCC alleged that Local Voters in Charge hired out-of-state residents to collect signatures, offered monetary incentives to encourage collection and spread misleading information to potential signees.
Elizabeth Robben Murray, the attorney representing Local Voters in Charge, on Tuesday admitted that a small number of canvassers received bonuses. Those canvassers collected approximately 1,500 signatures, Murray said.
Local Voters in Charge was not initially named in the lawsuit, but it later joined as an intervenor.
Attorney John Tull, representing ACCC, argued that it is illegal under Arkansas law to pay or even offer to pay a person for the number of signatures obtained on a statewide petition. Tull said all paid canvassers involved with the anti-casino amendment were offered financial incentives, which should render all signatures invalid.
ACCC’s attorneys also argued on Tuesday that the recent decision from the Arkansas Supreme Court to support Thurston’s rejection of the Arkansas Abortion Amendment of 2024 should disqualify all signatures collected for the anti-casino measure based on who signed their paperwork.
Tuesday’s hearing was largely spent listening to a deposition recording of Thurston, in which Murray questions him for over an hour about his role as secretary of state and how he delegates tasks to his office staff.
Thurston said his staff regularly drafts content and applies his electronic signature to documents, including letters related to the rejection of the Arkansas Abortion Amendment. He struggled to recall specifics about the canvasser registration process. He also said he didn’t know one of the primary contacts or the ballot question committee name for a measure that his office oversees.
When asked about the change his office made to reject signatures on ballot initiative affidavits from anyone who isn’t the sponsor, Thurston said, “Personally, I’m embarrassed we had it wrong for so long.”
He said he didn’t know it was wrong before talking to legal counsel at the attorney general’s office, but he does not “defend error. It was our [the secretary of state’s office] error.”
Thurston was elected as secretary of state in 2018. Jordan Broyles and Justin Brascher with the attorney general’s office are representing him in this case.
The hearing will resume Wednesday at 8 a.m., potentially starting with videos of ACCC-hired observers that their attorneys said is “devastating” to Local Voters in Charge. The ballot question committee has requested the videos be excluded.
