Organizers didn't submit all the required paperwork for the measure to appear on the November ballot, Secretary of State John Thurston said.

July 10, 2024, 3:46 PM PDT / Updated July 11, 2024, 7:57 AM PDT
By Adam Edelman and Lindsey Pipia

The Arkansas secretary of state on Wednesday rejected an effort to place a constitutional amendment to enshrine abortion rights on the November ballot, saying organizers failed to submit some required paperwork with its signatures.

In a letter to the organization behind the effort, Arkansans for Limited Government, Secretary of State John Thurston wrote that organizers did not submit statements that the group had explained various requirements about the signature-collection process in the state to its paid canvassers and did not identify those paid canvassers by name.

“By contrast, other sponsors of initiative petitions complied with this requirement. Therefore, I must reject your submission,” wrote Thurston, a Republican.

Rebecca Bobrow, a spokesperson for Arkansans for Limited Government, said that the group "will fight this ridiculous disqualification attempt with everything we have."

"We will not back down," she said in a statement, adding that her group had "worked with the Secretary of State’s office during every step of the process to ensure that we followed all rules and regulations."

Arkansans for Limited Government announced Friday that it collected the signatures of more than 100,000 registered voters — more than the approximately 90,700 it needed before the deadline that day — to move forward with getting its proposal on the general election ballot.

In his letter, Thurston said the lack of required paperwork affected 14,143 signatures, leaving the group short of the required amount.

Arkansas is one of 11 states where organizers formally launched efforts to place pro-abortion-rights amendments on their fall ballots.

The measures are officially on the ballots in six states: Colorado, Maryland, Florida, South Dakota, Nevada and New York. Organizers in four more — Arizona, Missouri, Montana and Nebraska — have submitted signatures, but further steps remain before those initiatives are certified to appear on the ballots.

Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights, the group behind the abortion-rights amendment in Montana, announced Wednesday that it filed a lawsuit alleging the state secretary of state's office is "unlawfully blocking the verification of potentially thousands of valid signatures by qualified Montana electors."

Abortion-rights advocates had faced staunch opposition to their ballot measure proposal in deeply conservative Arkansas.

Nearly all abortions in Arkansas are banned under a 2022 state law that snapped into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The state’s law makes exceptions only for abortion when the woman’s life is at risk.

The state Health Department has said zero abortions were reported performed in the state last year. And American United for Life, an anti-abortion-rights group, rated Arkansas as “the most pro-life state in America” this year.

In addition, Arkansans for Limited Government — unlike the coalitions fighting for similar measures in other states — does not have any support or backing from major national abortion-rights groups, such as Planned Parenthood, which has said the measure does not go far enough in its goals of expanding abortion access.

The group’s proposal would protect abortion access in the state up to 18 weeks after fertilization. It would also protect abortion access for all pregnancies beyond that point that were the results of rape or incest and in all instances when there were fatal fetal anomalies and when abortion care was necessary to protect pregnant women’s lives or physical health.