Sign up for Inside Washington’s daily email to get exclusive U.S. reporting and analysis delivered straight to your inbox
Get our free Inside Washington email
Get our free Inside Washington email
A bill that would have allowed Arkansas residents to vote on expanding abortion rights in the state will not be on the ballot in November, the state Supreme Court said Thursday.
In a 4-3 decision, the Arkansas Supreme Court majority upheld the Secretary of State’s decision to deny the request to amend the law on the grounds that the initiative’s organizers had not submitted the required number of signatures.
Arkansas For Limited Government, the group behind the petition, submitted more than 100,000 signatures in support of the amendment – more than the 90,704 signatures needed to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot.
However, the Arkansas Secretary of State denied the request on the grounds that the group had not provided affidavits confirming that paid poll workers had received instructions on how to collect the approximately 14,000 of those signatures.
This brought the petition to 87,675 characters – slightly less than the required number.
“Therefore, we have directed the Secretary to count the signatures of volunteer poll workers, but we do not order him to count the signatures of paid poll workers. Because the number of signatures in the first count does not meet the statutory threshold for the validity of the ballot, we decline further action,” Justice Rhonda Wood wrote in the majority opinion.
The proposed amendment would have prohibited states from restricting the availability of abortion up to 18 weeks of pregnancy or in cases of rape, incest, fatal fetal abnormalities, or to protect the life or health of the pregnant woman.
In Arkansas, almost all forms of abortion are prohibited, except in cases where the life of the pregnant person is in danger.
The state does not provide any exceptions in cases of rape or incest.
Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders praised the state Supreme Court’s decision, claiming it created “the first conservative Supreme Court majority in Arkansas history.”
The core of the dispute in this case was of a highly technical nature.
The Arkansas Secretary of State argued that election officials could only count 87,675 of the signatures collected because they were from volunteers. However, signatures from paid poll workers could not be counted because Arkansas for Limited Government did not bundle the proper documentation for the paid poll workers but submitted them separately.
State law requires campaign teams to submit documents listing the names of each paid poll worker and confirming that they have been trained in signature-gathering rules.
In his dissent, Chief Justice John Kemp accused the court majority and the Arkansas Secretary of State of treating the petition differently than others.
“Why are defendant and the majority determined to withhold this particular vote from the people? The majority has succeeded in its efforts to change the law to deprive voters of the opportunity to vote on this issue, which is not the proper function of this Court,” Kemp wrote.
Arkansas For Limited Government called the decision “upsetting” and thanked the more than 800 volunteers who helped coordinate the signature collection.
“We cannot and will not rest until women in Arkansas have access to safe, standard health care and the autonomy to make decisions about their bodies free from government interference,” the organization said.
