The Arkansas Senate deserves particular credit this year for passing bills to improve the integrity of the process for putting an issue on the ballot for voter approval to become a law. Arkansas’s Secretary of State noticed that out-of-state groups with endless money “are able to get almost any issue on Arkansas ballots.” Frankly, almost half of our states, many of them predominantly conservative, are quite vulnerable to a misuse of their ballot initiative process. Out-of-state or even foreign billionaires can simply hire petition gatherers to obtain signatures to qualify for the ballot, then outspend conservatives 10-to-1 or more on advertising to pass the measure as new law.
The Arkansas Senate decided they wanted nothing to do with these abuses. Senate Bill 207 requires petition signature-gathering canvassers to inform potential signatories that petition fraud is a Class A misdemeanor. That alone would help reduce fraudulent signatures. SB 208 requires that petition signers show a photo ID. SB 209 commands the Secretary of State not the recognize and count signatures for which there is a preponderance of evidence that the canvasser violated any law in collecting signatures. SB 210 requires that signatories read or have the title read to them, before signing a petition.
Finally, Arkansas SB 211 requires the canvasser to submit a sworn statement indicating compliance with all the signature-gathering laws. Without the sworn statement, the Secretary of State is ordered not to count the signatures gathered by that canvasser.
The Arkansas Supreme Court also set a good example last fall concerning harmful ballot initiatives. It properly excluded from the ballot both the marijuana and abortion-on-demand ballot initiatives that Missouri and Ohio allowed.
The Republican supermajorities in the legislatures in Ohio, Missouri, and elsewhere should follow the lead of the Arkansas Senate. Marijuana was recently legalized by ballot initiatives in Ohio and Missouri over objection by the elected representatives of the people, but the legislatures and courts in conservative states could end this misuse of the initiative process.
This post originally appeared at https://phyllisschlafly.com/constitution/arkansas-leads-in-cleaning-up-petition-process/