By STEVE BRAWNER
Legalizing abortion. The Freedom of Information Act. Requiring paper-only ballots. Tax-free diapers and feminine hygiene products.
Does that get your attention? All of those issues are subjects of citizen-led ballot initiatives. Backers are trying to get them on the November 2024 ballot, starting with draft proposals that the attorney general must approve. (Spoiler alert: The first draft is almost always rejected.)
Once Attorney General Tim Griffin approves the ballot titles, backers then must collect signatures. That’s an arduous and expensive task that legislators have made more difficult. They’ve done this by increasing the number of counties where a minimum number of signatures must be collected, by banning non-Arkansan canvassers, and by prohibiting groups from paying canvassers by the signature. Proposed constitutional amendments require 90,704 valid signatures. Initiated acts – laws passed by voters like those passed by legislators – require 71,321. They are less permanent than a constitutional amendment. Even if backers overcome those hurdles, there’s a good chance they’ll face court challenges by opponents.
In other words, you may not see all of these on your ballot, but you might. You’ll likely see more than one. They all have credible backers.
Obviously, the most controversial of those proposals would be the one enshrining the right to an abortion in the Arkansas Constitution. It would allow unlimited abortions within 18 weeks of conception but also would allow it any time when the conception is the result of rape or incest, when the fetus has a fatal anomaly, or when “abortion is needed to protect the pregnant female’s life or health.” Currently, abortions outside of an immediate life-or-death medical emergency are illegal under Arkansas law.
Griffin last week rejected the first draft, starting with its name, “The Arkansas Reproductive Healthcare Amendment.” He said that name was “tinged with partisan coloring and misleading” because it’s really about abortion.
Griffin took issue with other elements of the amendment. The word “health” is vague and can be really broad, especially if it involves mental health, Griffin said.
Backers will return with a second draft. If it makes the ballot, it will overshadow everything else next year except the presidential race. Other Republican-leaning states – Kansas, Kentucky, Montana and Ohio – have passed pro-abortion rights measures the past two years.
That doesn’t mean this one would pass here. This year’s well-regarded Arkansas Poll by the University of Arkansas’ Diane D. Blair Center of Southern Politics and Society found that only 38% of respondents wanted to make it easier for women to obtain abortions. Meanwhile, 25% wanted no change, while 29% wanted to make it harder.
As for the other proposed amendments, Griffin last week also rejected two efforts by the group Restore Election Integrity Arkansas. One would ban voting machines and require all elections to be conducted using hand-marked paper ballots. The other would add restrictions and controls to the absentee ballot process. Backers say they will return with refined proposals.
The constitutional amendment that would seem to have the best chance of passing is one by Arkansas Citizens for Transparency (ACT) that would enshrine the state’s Freedom of Information Act into the Constitution. It would be accompanied by a proposed initiated act that would spell out the details. The FOIA requires meetings to be public and government documents to be made available to citizens who request them. It is generally considered to be one of the nation’s most expansive government transparency laws.
ACT grew from an attempt by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and lawmakers to restrict the current FOIA law in a special session earlier this year. A broad left-right-center coalition quickly developed, and now it seeks to prevent lawmakers from acting that way again. Among the backers is David Couch, an attorney who has passed initiatives increasing the state’s minimum wage and legalizing medical marijuana. He’s good at this.
Finally, Griffin has already approved the ballot title of an initiated act that would exempt from the state sales tax adult and child diapers along with menstrual cycle products. This would seem almost certain to pass if it makes the ballot. Couch is part of this effort, too.
Arkansas had the lowest voter turnout of any state in the 2020 presidential election. It’s still a long way from next November, and these proposals have a long way to go before they make the ballot. If they do, whatever type of ballot is used, perhaps they could inspire more Arkansans to go to the polls.
At the very least, they’ll attract attention.