Arkansas abortion amendment supporters challenge Secretary of State’s rejection

Opponents and supporters of the Arkansas Abortion Amendment gather at the state Capitol on Friday, July 5, 2024. (Tess Vrbin/Arkansas Advocate)

Supporters of a proposed Arkansas amendment to create a limited right to abortion sent a letter to Secretary of State John Thurston on Thursday, claiming he unlawfully rejected the signatures to put the measure on the November ballot on Wednesday.

Arkansans for Limited Government submitted 101,525 signatures from registered voters Friday in support of the Arkansas Abortion Amendment . Thurston’s office has 30 days after the deadline to count signatures and determine their validity; constitutional amendments need 90,704 signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Thurston wrote in Wednesday’s rejection letter that AFLG did not submit two legally required documents : an affidavit identifying paid canvassers by name and proof that the ballot question committee explained to canvassers the state’s laws for soliciting signatures and provided them with the Secretary of State’s initiatives and referenda handbook before they started canvassing.

AFLG said Wednesday night that it did in fact submit these documents to Thurston’s office, calling the rejection a “ridiculous” attempt to “silence” supporters of abortion access.

In Thursday’s letter, AFLG Executive Director Lauren Cowles gave Thurston a deadline of Monday to confirm “that the submission of the initiative petition facially contains the required number of signatures and that your office is proceeding to verify all of the submitted signatures.”

“Your letter fails to specify in what manner AFLG failed to comply with the plain language of the statute, leaving AFLG to guess at your reasoning,” Cowles wrote.

In drafting the paid canvasser affidavits, AFLG copied the exact language of a sample affidavit provided by your office to AFLG. These materials had already been provided to you, and were only provided again in an abundance of caution, even against the insistence of your staff that some of this information was not required.

– Lauren Cowles, executive director of Arkansans for Limited Government

Thurston wrote Wednesday that failure to comply with the law in question invalidated the 14,143 signatures collected by paid canvassers. The remaining 87,382 signatures, collected by unpaid volunteers, were not going to be counted and validated because they were more than 3,000 signatures short of the required minimum, Powell said Wednesday.

Cowles reiterated in Thursday’s letter that AFLG submitted the required documents, including in a June 27 “Sponsor Affidavit.”

“In addition, even if the Sponsor Affidavit failed to meet the statutory requirements in some technical way, AFLG’s compliance efforts with respect to [the law in question] are abundant, well-documented and repeatedly acknowledged by your office, which is required to file and preserve AFLG’s submissions,” Cowles wrote.

Chris Powell, Thurston’s spokesman, provided the Arkansas Advocate with all the documents AFLG submitted Friday upon request. The documents include a list of paid canvassers — with a stamp from the Secretary of State’s office indicating it was filed July 5 — and a 691-page file with signed affidavits from all of AFLG’s paid canvassers testifying to the signature collection education portion of the law.

AFLG’s paid canvassers totaled more than 250, and the group added 74 more paid canvassers between June 27 and Friday, the documents show.

“In drafting the paid canvasser affidavits, AFLG copied the exact language of a sample affidavit provided by your office to AFLG,” Cowles wrote. “These materials had already been provided to you, and were only provided again in an abundance of caution, even against the insistence of your staff that some of this information was not required.”

Additionally, Cowles wrote, none of the conditions listed in state law that justify the Secretary of State refusing to count signatures at all were among Thurston’s reasons for rejecting the amendment. Thurston argued before the Arkansas Supreme Court in 2016 that other portions of state law contain “a ‘do not count’ penalty” and the absence of this provision in the law regarding counting signatures for ballot initiatives “was an intentional omission,” she added.

AFLG also asserted in Cowles’ letter that Thurston’s office is required to count every signature regardless of the validity of the paid canvassers’ signatures.

“Your July 10 letter makes clear that you relied upon AFLG’s representation regarding the total number of signatures collected, not your own count,” Cowles wrote. “AFLG’s conservative, internal signature count has no bearing on your independent duty as the official charged with verifying signatures to perform an initial count of all signatures.”

Two other proposed constitutional amendments were submitted to Thurston’s office Friday with the required number of signatures to make the November ballot if verified, and the two respective ballot question committees submitted the required documents to Thurston’s office on Friday, according to records Powell provided the Advocate.

“We are committed to proving that the Secretary of State is wrong in his attempt to undermine the efforts of 800 volunteers and silence the voices of more than 101,000 Arkansas voters,” AFLG said in a statement Thursday after sending the letter to Thurston and media outlets. “This is just the beginning. We will keep fighting for our voices to be heard [and] our rights to be restored.”

Supporters of the Arkansas Abortion Amendment began collecting signatures in January . The proposed amendment 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.

Supporters of the Arkansas Abortion Amendment faced a “Decline to Sign” effort encouraging voters not to sign petitions for the amendment. The effort was led by anti-abortion groups Arkansas Right to Life and the Family Council, the latter of which posted on its website in June a list of AFLG’s 79 paid canvassers at the time.

AFLG called the post attempted intimidation ; the Family Council has since removed the list from the post but has kept it publicly available on its political action committee website. Acquiring and publishing the list is legal under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.

The Family Council and several Republican elected officials praised Thurston’s rejection of the amendment’s signatures on Wednesday.

Reporter Mary Hennigan contributed to this story.

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