Arkansas Lawmakers have advanced another bill changing the state’s direct democracy process.
Members of a Senate committee on Thursday advanced House Bill 1713, which requires all titles of citizen-led ballot initiatives and constitutional amendments to be written at or below an eighth-grade reading level. The bill’s Senate co-sponsor, Sen. Mark Johnson, R-Little Rock, said it’s an effort to make the process more accessible to voters.
“People have points to argue, but if they’re clear that if you believe this way you’re for it and if you believe the opposite then you’re against it, that’s the way the process is supposed to work. We’re not trying to confuse people,” he said.
The bill would only apply to citizen-led measures, not proposals referred to the ballot by lawmakers. Kristin Stuart spoke against the bill in Thursday’s meeting of the Senate State Agencies and Governmental Affairs committee, saying some of the simplest ballot titles wouldn’t pass the test set out by the bill.
“‘To make abortion legal in Arkansas,’ six simple words which I think you would all agree would be a good explanation of a bill and what the intent is, that itself does not pass the muster put forward by [House Bill] 1713,” she said.
Others pointed out the Supreme Court of Arkansas establishes a high standard for ballot titles, requiring them to list everything the proposal would do. Sen. Clarke Tucker, D-Little Rock, raised concerns that other requirements for ballot titles would make it nearly impossible for voters to get ballot measures approved.
“Something compels ballot titles to be one sentence. If it’s a law, then the only way this bill can work is if it amends that law. The way the bill is written is the attorney general ‘shall not certify’ something above the eighth-grade reading level,” Tucker said. “If there’s also another law that requires ballot titles to be one sentence, then that means no ballot title will ever be certified because it can’t both be one sentence and at an eighth-grade reading level.”
HB1713 would compel the attorney general to reject ballot titles that are written beyond an eighth-grade level as determined by the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Formula, which was developed for the U.S. Navy in the mid-1970s. The test is a mathematical formula which takes into consideration the total words, sentences and syllables in a text to determine at which grade level it’s written.
The bill passed committee on a voice vote and now heads to the full Senate for consideration.
