The group behind the Arkansas Abortion Amendment said Wednesday night that it would fight Arkansas Secretary of State John Thurston’s surprise rejection of the proposal today, calling his reasoning “absurd and demonstrably, undeniably incorrect.”
“We will fight this ridiculous disqualification attempt with everything we have. We will not back down,” Rebecca Bobrow, a spokesperson for Arkansans for Limited Government, said in a statement.
Arkansans for Limited Government submitted boxes of petitions signed by more than 101,000 voters to Thurston’s office on July 5 — well over the 90,704 signatures needed to qualify the proposed constitutional amendment for the November ballot. If passed by voters, the measure would broadly restore abortion access in Arkansas, which has instituted a near-total ban on abortion since 2022. But on Wednesday, Thurston, a Republican, said that the group was disqualified from the ballot because it had failed to submit a piece of paperwork along with the signatures.
A state law cited by Thurston in a letter Wednesday says that groups aiming to put a proposal before voters must submit an affidavit “stating the number of petitions and the total number of signatures being filed,” along with a statement identifying any paid canvassers by name and attesting that they were notified of the state’s requirements for signature collection. The statement also must affirm that canvassers were “provided a copy of the most recent edition of the Secretary of State’s initiatives and referenda handbook.”
Thurston said Arkansans for Limited Government had not submitted such a statement, requiring him to disqualify its proposal.
Bobrow expressed outrage over Thurston’s decision, saying the group had already provided the state with a list of paid canvassers. She pointed out that the list Arkansans for Limited Government had previously given to the secretary of state was obtained under public records law “and released by our opposition in an attempt to intimidate our supporters” — a reference to the right-wing Arkansas Family Council’s publication of the names and home cities of abortion amendment canvassers last month.
“Arkansas law does not empower the Secretary of State to make an unfounded legal interpretation, which is what he did today by summarily declaring that we have not completed the steps for qualification,” she wrote. “We are owed a period to provide a hard copy of the statement, which has been emailed to their office more than a dozen times, if that is what’s needed.”
Bobrow also said the group had worked with staff from Thurston’s office “during every step of the process” about how to comply with the technicalities of the law. Those discussions continued right up until the signatures were turned in on July 5, she said.
“In fact, the Secretary of State’s office supplied us with the affidavit paperwork, which we used,” she said. “Until today, we had no reason not to trust that the paperwork they supplied us was correct and complete.”
Approved ~ FS
james blue