A supporter of the Arkansas Abortion Amendment holds up a sign in an Arkansas Capitol hallway while petitions to put the amendment on the November ballot are delivered in boxes to the Secretary of State on Friday, July 5, 2024. (Tess Vrbin/Arkansas Advocate)
ARKANSAS ADVOCATE: Arkansas Secretary of State John Thurston continued to argue in a court filing Monday that a ballot question committee did not file required paperwork when it submitted a proposed constitutional amendment that would create a limited right to abortion.
Thurston’s filing was in compliance with a state Supreme Court order on Friday that his office respond to a complaint filed July 6 by Arkansans for Limited Government.
The response denied most of the allegations in AFLG’s July 16 legal complaint and reiterated many of Thurston’s previous reasons for rejecting the proposed amendment, which the ballot question committee submitted to his office July 5 with more than 102,000 signatures.
Thurston said July 10 that AFLG did not submit required documents related to paid canvassers, rendering 14,143 signatures invalid. The remaining signatures fell short of the threshold of the 90,704 needed to qualify for the ballot, Thurston said, so his office would not count them.
AFLG Executive Director Lauren Cowles asked the state Supreme Court to order Thurston to count the signatures, stating that the committee did in fact submit the required accompanying documents to Thurston’s office multiple times, including on the submission deadline.
“Respondent admits that, on July 5, 2024, Cowles, on behalf of AFLG, submitted signatures and some of the required accompanying documents to the Secretary of State,” Attorney General Tim Griffin, representing Thurston, wrote in Monday’s filing. “Respondent denies AFLG submitted all the required documents.”
State law requires an affidavit identifying paid canvassers by name and proof that the ballot question committee explained to canvassers the states laws for soliciting signatures and provided them with the Secretary of State’s initiatives and referenda handbook before they started canvassing.
AFLG submitted a “Sponsor Affidavit” to Thurston’s office June 27, testifying to the signature collection education portion of the law. The affidavit was included in the July 16 court documents.
On July 5, the committee submitted a 691-page file with signed affidavits from all of AFLG’s paid canvassers, which totaled more than 250, making the same testimony as in the sponsor affidavit.
“The Secretary’s attorneys and representatives assured Cowles that she had filed the necessary paperwork with her submission,” the complaint states.
Thurston denied this claim in Monday’s filing. He also denied the claim that his office told AFLG on July 4 that submitting another sponsor affidavit with the final list of paid canvassers “was not required.”
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court fulfilled Cowles’ request and ordered Thurston to count the signatures collected by volunteer canvassers.
Leslie Bellamy, the Secretary of State’s office’s director of elections, said in an affidavit filed Thursday that she oversaw the count of 87,675 signatures almost 300 more than AFLG’s estimate upon submitting them as well as 912 signatures “on petition parts that do not indicate whether the canvasser was volunteer or paid,” meaning she was “unable to determine” whether they belonged in the court-ordered total.
More filings upcoming
Griffin filed a motion to dismiss the case on July 19, arguing that Thurston “correctly rejected” AFLG’s submission.
In Monday’s filing, Thurston “reasserts the arguments made in his Motion to Dismiss,” Griffin and his legal team wrote.
AFLG’s attorney, Peter Shults, filed a response to the motion to dismiss July 22. Shults argued that noncompliance with the paperwork requirements alone does not invalidate an entire petition or any part of it.
The Supreme Court has yet to rule on the motion to dismiss, which says AFLG is not entitled to the cure period Arkansas law allows for proposed ballot measures. Sponsors can be allowed more time to submit additional signatures if the initial submission contains valid signatures from registered voters equal to at least 75% of the overall required number of signatures and 75% of the required number from at least 50 counties.
“The Secretary is not providing petitioners an opportunity to cure or correct any perceived deficiencies in their submission,” Cowles’ complaint states.
Thurston’s response on Monday “states that the Arkansas Constitution and statutes regarding a cure period speak for themselves” and “denies any remaining allegations” on this specific issue.
AFLG leaders read the response Monday morning and “are looking forward to our opportunity to once again demonstrate to the Supreme Court that the Secretary of State has acted unlawfully in his attempt to disqualify the Arkansas Abortion Amendment,” they said in a statement.
The high court on Friday ordered both Thurston and AFLG to file briefs in the case by Aug. 2 and Aug. 9. The Secretary of State’s deadline to certify measures for the November ballot is Aug. 22.
If the Arkansas Abortion Amendment makes it to the ballot and is approved by voters, it would not allow government entities to “prohibit, penalize, delay or restrict abortion services within 18 weeks of fertilization.”
The proposal would also permit abortion services in cases of rape, incest, a fatal fetal anomaly or to “protect the pregnant female’s life or physical health,” and it would nullify any of the state’s existing “provisions of the Constitution, statutes and common law” that conflict with it.
Abortion has been illegal in Arkansas, except to save the pregnant person’s life, since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
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