Arkansas – Arkansas Secretary of State John Thurston announced on Wednesday, July 10, 2024, that his office rejected the petitions submitted by a group of individuals looking to add an abortion rights amendment to the state constitution. Officials in the secretary of state’s office said the submissions were disqualified due to a technicality regarding canvassers. The amendment they were hoping to include would add abortion access to the state constitution and would stop any laws from being passed to restrict abortion for Arkansas citizens in cases of rape, incest, or fatal fetal anomalies, or to protect the life or well-being of the mother within the first 18 weeks of conception.
On Friday, July 5, 2024, Arkansans for Limited Government, an Arkansas group, secured and turned in more than 100,000 signatures from 54 counties for the November ballot. In a letter from the secretary of state to the group, Thurston stated that he would not accept the petition signatures because they failed to comply with statutory requirements for submitting a petition. The requirements failed, including failure to submit a statement identifying paid canvassers by name and failure to have a signed statement noting that they had given paid canvassers documents outlining rules before they started gathering signatures. Thurston said that because of these issues, the number of valid signatures dropped by 14,143, which makes the total below the required minimum of 90,704. These requirements became part of Arkansas law in 2013. If you would like to read the full letter, you can click here.
The Arkansans for Limited Government group posted a statement in response to the Secretary of State saying, “We worked with the Secretary of State’s office during every step of the process to ensure that we followed all rules and regulations. At multiple junctures — including on July 5 inside the Capitol Building — we discussed signature submission requirements with the Secretary of State’s staff. In fact, the Secretary of State’s office supplied us with the affidavit paperwork, which we used. Until today, we had no reason not to trust that the paperwork they supplied us was correct and complete. “
