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The Arkansas Supreme Court blocked an abortion-rights initiative from appearing on the state’s ballot this fall, upholding a July decision by the secretary of state to reject the measure for not following rules related to paid signature gatherers.
The decision means Arkansas will not be among the handful of states where voters will have the chance weigh in on abortion-related measures on the November ballot, as the court’s majority opinion denies “further relief” to the group behind the proposed constitutional amendment.
“The court is being asked to order another constitutional officer, the Arkansas Secretary of State, to ignore a mandatory statutory provision that he has enforced,” Associate Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Rhonda Wood wrote in the opinion.
“The Secretary correctly refused to count the signatures collected by paid canvassers because the sponsor failed to file the paid canvasser training certificate,” she continued .
Associate Justice Karen Baker panned the ruling in her dissent, arguing the it misapplies the state’s laws on ballot initiatives to throw up a road block for those seeking to get the initiative on the ballot.
“Why are the respondents and the majority determined to keep this particular vote from the people?” Baker wrote. “The majority has succeeded in its efforts to change the law in order to deprive the voters of the opportunity to vote on this issue, which is not the proper role of this court.”
Arkansas for Limited Government, the group behind the effort to place an amendment to enshrine abortion access in the state’s constituion, criticized “this infuriating result” in a statement, adding: “We will not back down. And we will remember this in November.”
The organization submitted more than 100,000 signatures to the state in early July as part of the effort to certify the ballot measure, which proposed protecting abortion access “within 18 weeks of fertilization” and restricting bans at any point in cases of rape, incest, fatal fetal anomaly, or when a doctor believes an abortion is needed to protect a mother’s life or physical health.
Less than a week later, the Arkansas secretary of state’s office cited a failure to follow procedures related to the use of paid canvassers to invalidate 14,000 signatures and drop the petition below the 90,704 signature threshold needed.
Arkansas law bans virtually all abortions, with exceptions when a woman’s life is at risk. State Health Department records show zero reported abortions in the state in 2023.
Of the 11 states where organizers have submitted petitions to qualify ballot measures aimed at protecting or expanding abortion rights this year, Arkansas’ is the only effort that has so fr been officially rejected.
Nine other states will put similar ballot initiatives before voters this fall, part of an ongoing response from abortion rights advocates to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. A measure in Nebraska is still pending validation from the secretary of state’s office.
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