Funding defeat

Law should forbid manipulation of petitions

Perhaps the most powerful example of Arkansans’ direct ability to influence the laws they must abide by is the process of petitions to propose constitutional amendments, initiated acts or referenda.

At least one prosecuting attorney suggests state law needs to be changed to protect that process from a strategy that seems illegal but doesn’t appear to be. More on that in a moment.

As the name suggests, an amendment changes or adds to the text of the state’s 1874 constitution — Arkansas fifth constitution, but the one in force for the last 148 years — or any of its 102 amendments. If adopted, an amendment can only be changed by a subsequent amendment, approved by registered voters.

An initiated act doesn’t involve the constitution. Rather, it becomes a state law, just like any law passed by the Arkansas General Assembly. It can subsequently be modified or even overturned by the legislature.

A referenda refers an act passed by the state Legislature but referred, by petition, to the people for approval or rejection.

These processes involve gathering signatures in specific ways, in the form of a petition. If someone wanted to get a constitutional amendment on the November ballot this year, for example, they had to submit at least 89,151 voters’ signatures. For an initiated act, it was 71,321 signatures. For referenda, it’s 53,491.

It’s not an easy task. To a far greater degree than proposals coming from the state Legislature, initiated acts and amendments are heavily scrutinized for their wording and ballot titles and the procedures used to collect signatures. Even for those proposals that get enough signatures, the path to the November ballot resembles a legal minefield.

But getting the signatures is the most fundamental requirement. Petition drives are typically started by a group motivated by their own interests, but it can be truthfully stated that once the threshold on the number of signatures has been met, a proposal is, for all intents and purposes, an initiative “of the people.”

The people of Pope County and its county seat, Russellville, are quite familiar with the entire process, if they’ve paid much attention at all. In 2018, it was an initiated constitutional amendment that turned Pope County and three other locations in Arkansas into authorized sites for four licensed casinos. While the three other locales — Jefferson County plus Oaklawn Jockey Club Inc. in Hot Springs and Southland Racing Corp. in West Memphis — embraced the casinos, people in Pope County engaged in a lengthy legal and political battle over a casino there.

A group called Fair Play for Arkansas 2022 this year attempted to promote a constitutional amendment that would have removed Pope County as a possible location for a state-licensed casino. Its efforts were thwarted when the Arkansas Secretary of State’s Office determined the group had not submitted enough valid signatures of registered voters to qualify for the Nov. 8 ballot.

Now, back to that prosecuting attorney. Jeff Phillips, in the Fifth Judicial District, received a complaint. from Fair Play for Arkansas 2022 that opponents to their efforts were paying canvassers — the people Fair Play dispatched to collect signatures — to “destroy documents in an attempt to frustrate an attempt to put an issue on the ballot.”

“When I initially reviewed the evidence and turned it over to my chief deputy, we both felt there had to be a crime committed,” Phillips wrote in a mid-August letter to a Fair Play official.

It makes sense, doesn’t it? Here are people undertaking a process identified in the state constitution and laws of Arkansas to ask voters an important question at the ballot box. Is it right that a person or persons with an opposing viewpoint can use money to effectively bribe canvassers not to do their jobs?

Some people take the view that all is fair in politics, but this process isn’t just about the groups organizing on either side of the question. Those petitions contain the names of Arkansans who are asking the state to place an issue on the ballot. If those voters sign their names then a canvasser destroys those petitions for pay, that’s not just an offense against the organized groups; it’s an affront to the voters who have put their names on the petitions.

It is their names and their wishes, after all, that are being destroyed in such a scenario.

Sadly, Phillips and his chief deputy concluded, after researching, that the state’s law on petition fraud includes no mention of what could be viewed as bribing canvassers. Perhaps nobody has previously run across such boldly egregious behaviors.

We haven’t seen the evidence Phillips cited, but if a prosecutor find it believable, he’d be squarely within reason to suggest the law ought to cover such behaviors. And that’s exactly what Phillips did.

His office has submitted a proposal to the state’ prosecutor coordinator’s office for consideration at the next legislative session to include such behaviors in the state’s petition fraud statute. He also suggests allowing prosecution of such behaviors as tampering with public records.

Such behaviors should be illegal and lead to criminal prosecution. It’s certainly a moral infraction now, but it should also be a legal one.

The formal group that opposed Fair Play’s petition denies any involvement, and we know of no reason to suggest their involvement. But whatever information brought concerns of this kind of behavior to the fore is good enough to support a law making such manipulations of a public process illegal. It should include the person paying for the unscrupulous behaviors and the canvasser who participates.

We recognize money can buy a lot, but it shouldn’t be able to buy the destruction of petitions signed by Arkansas’ voters.