LITTLE ROCK — The Arkansas State Police and sheriff’s offices in Craighead and Crittenden counties are investigating allegations of fraudulent signatures on petitions for proposed ballot measures.
State police are investigating allegations in Mississippi County regarding lawyer Sheffield Nelson’s proposed initiated act to increase the state’s severance tax on natural gas to raise money for roads.
The sheriff ’s offices in Craighead and Crittenden counties are investigating allegations related to political consultant Nancy Todd’s proposed constitutional amendment that would allow her private company to operate multiple casinos in Arkansas.
The secretary of state’s office last month verified that only about 30 percent of the signatures submitted by Nelson and Todd were of registered Arkansas voters. Nelson said he doesn’t plan to turn in any more signatures to try qualify his measure for the ballot, but Todd said she plans to do so.
Both Nelson and Todd said they welcome the investigations into the invalid signatures that they blamed on duplicitous petition gatherers.
“They need to find out who perpetrated the fraud, and they need to go get them and they ought to be prosecuted, ” said Nelson of Little Rock.
The investigations were requested by Prosecuting Attorney Scott Ellington of Jonesboro, who also is a Democratic candidate challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford of Jonesboro in Arkansas’ 1st Congressional District.
Ellington said his requests for the Arkansas State Police and the Craighead County and Crittenden County sheriffs to investigate these allegations have nothing to do with his bid for a U.S. House seat.
“It’s like there is a whole bunch of people trying to take advantage of the system,” he said.
A spokesman for Crawford declined to comment about Ellington’s requests for these investigations.
Arkansas Code Annotated 7-9-103 states that it is a Class A misdemeanor to sign another person’s name to a petition, knowingly sign a petition more than once, knowingly sign a petition when not legally entitled to do so and knowingly misrepresent the purpose of a petition. It also is a Class A misdemeanor for a canvasser to knowingly make a false statement on a petition form or for a notary to knowingly fail to witness the canvassers’ affidavit.
A Class A misdemeanor is punishable by up to one year in prison and a $2,500 fine.
Ellington said he first learned about allegations of fraudulent signatures on Nelson’s petition from a reporter for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette last month. He said he subsequently talked with the Arkansas State Police about the allegations, asked the state police to open an investigation, and the state police agreed to do so.
He said a handful of residents of Mississippi County, whose signatures are reflected on Nelson’s petition, have signed sworn affidavits that they have never signed any petition to get the measure on the ballot.
The Arkansas State Police’s Criminal Investigation Division is conducting an investigation into these allegations at Ellington’s request, said Bill Sadler, a spokesman for the state police.
Randy Zook, president of the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce and chairman of the group opposed to Nelson’s proposed initiated act, declined to comment about this investigation.
“We are going to focus on efforts to reform the process [and are] still working on it,” he said.
After being contacted by someone familiar with Southland Park in West Memphis, Ellington said he learned that a handful of Crittenden County residents whose signatures are on a petition for Todd’s proposed amendment have signed sworn affidavits that they never signed their names on the petition.
Ben Thielemier, a spokesman for the Stop the Casinos Now! Committee opposing Todd’s proposed amendment said the committee’s investigation “discovered some signatures, including entire pages, that caused concern [and] we turned our findings over to the prosecutor’s office for furtherreview.”
“Other individuals and organizations that investigated questionable signatures, including Southland, which is located within prosecutor Ellington’s district, also turned over information to the prosecutor’s office,” Thielemier said.
Ellington said he asked Crittenden County Sheriff Mike Allen to conduct an investigation into these allegations of fraudulent signatures. Mike Callender, chief investigator for the Crittenden County sheriff’s office, said he’s in the preliminary stages of the investigation.
Ellington said he talked Thursday morning with Todd, who told him that she had put aside a petition with suspect signatures from Craighead County and had it in a box. Ellington then asked Craighead County Sheriff Jack McCann investigate those signatures.
“If these allegations are true, the responsible person [or persons] will be held accountable,” Ellington said.
McCann said Ellington is going to send him a list of people whose names were supposedly forged on the petition for Todd’s proposed ballot measure, and sheriff’s deputies will try to reach these people and attempt to verify their signatures.
“We are going to open an investigation as soon as we receive the information from the prosecutor’s office,” McCann said.
Todd said that the box also contains petitions with bogus signatures for her ballot measure from counties across the state, and she calls the box “the jail box.”
“I am pretty sure I have got them in all the counties,” she said.
Todd said any signature gatherers who forged the signatures of registered voters “should be prosecuted to the full event of the law and I hope they go to jail.”
Secretary of State Mark Martin on Wednesday concluded that the ballot title for Todd’s proposal isn’t fair and complete and the proposed amendment won’t be on the Nov. 6 ballot.
Todd said she filed an amended ballot title with the secretary of state’s office on Thursday.
“We think we have cured it, and we’ll wait for that ruling,” she said.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 08/17/2012