Pulaski Co. jail blocks education ballot initiative sponsors from getting signatures from inmates

PULASKI COUNTY, Ark. – Controversy over a group’s efforts to take ballot measures behind jail bars in Pulaski County has resulted in the jail denying access to canvassers in the final week of signature gathering.

The law is said to be a gray area, but the Pulaski County Regional Detention Facility is pointing to a state law as its reason for not allowing this.

Bill Kopsky with the group For AR Kids said it wouldn’t be the first time a group’s gone into jails to register voters, but added his group has also had inmates who are registered sign ballot measures in the past.

Kopsky said the organization intended to do the same with their current ballot measure that focuses on education in Arkansas. State law doesn’t stop anyone from registering voters in county jails but does say organizers can’t use public resources for ballot measures.

For AR Kids’ ballot initiative aims to create free access to Pre-K for 3- and 4-year-olds and establish the minimum academic standards for Arkansas schools and require all schools that accept state taxpayer funds to follow the same rules and standards.

Nic Horton with Opportunity Arkansas, who discovered that For AR Kids aimed to collect signatures from inmates, said it all seemed questionable at best. He added that any taxpayer-funded resource shouldn’t be swayed one way more than the other.

“I think this is a very serious thing. When you have taxpayer-funded resources that should be a neutral forum. Whatever the forum is, it should be neutral,” Horton said. “It shouldn’t be for it, shouldn’t be against, because you have taxpayers on both sides. Their money and the resources they provide shouldn’t be going into something that’s political like this.”

Horton said that had the group planned to go in and register voters after the petition deadline on July 5, he might not have thought anything of it, but the timing of their plan is what first sounded alarms for Opportunity Arkansas.

Kopsky said his group would have gotten “maybe a few dozen” signatures had they gone into the jails.

“The allegation coming in from what’s his name (Horton) was inane because he’s arguing we’re somehow trying to game the system and get some magic massive number of signatures and that’s just not the case,” Kopsky said.

The deadline for these ballot groups to get all of their signatures is Friday.

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