Arkansas Secretary of State’s office set to verify hundreds of thousands of ballot initiative petition signatures

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Groups of Arkansans are in their final days of gathering signatures for ballot initiatives, hoping to leave the issues up to voters in November.

The signature-gathering process has been chaotic for many of the groups, but that chaos is soon to land in state employee’s hands where they’ll be counting hundreds of thousands of signatures.

Chris Powell with the Arkansas Secretary of State’s office said it’s an unprecedented number of petitions coming in this Friday compared to recent years. There are six constitutional amendments and one initiated act needing signatures to qualify for the ballot.

The issues range from legalizing abortion and medical marijuana expansions to changes to education and the Freedom of Information Act.

Powell said the state’s bringing in nearly 100 temporary workers to help verify that each signature comes from a registered voter in Arkansas and isn’t repeated. They’ll also have to make sure petitioners were notarized and that the full petition is printed on every sheet that’s signed.

Powell showed FOX 16 News the Old Supreme Court room filled with chairs and computers for workers starting Friday.

“We have this room and two other rooms which will be full of people doing nothing but verifying signatures and checking these petitions all day every day,” Powell said. “It’ll be 12 hours a day total for several weeks.”

The ballot initiatives have a requirement of more than 90,000 signatures coming from at least 50 of the counties in Arkansas for constitutional amendments. The minimum requirement for signatures is 72,000 for initiated acts.

State officials will start letting groups turn their signatures in the morning of Friday, July 5. The groups have until 5 p.m. that day to get everything turned in.

The secretary of state’s office has until August 22 to determine which measures qualify for the ballot.

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