BENTONVILLE — The Benton County Clerk’s office staff will work today to verify petition signatures for a referendum allowing alcohol sales in Benton County.
County Clerk Tena O’Brien said Friday afternoon the staff checked 48,042 signatures submitted to her office July 12. Of the those checked through Friday, she said, 37,185 were accepted and 10,650 rejected. Another 207 signatures are pending while staff do additional checking. The petitioners need another 3,986 to to place the measure on the Nov. 6 ballot, O’Brien said.
At A Glance
Petition Process
Keep Dollars in Benton County needs 41,171 valid signatures for the alcohol sales issue to appear on the Nov. 6 ballot. The County Clerk’s staff must must sure each of the signatures corresponds to a registered voter. With about 56,000 signatures on petitions submitted, the group will have signatures from more people than voted in the 2010 general election. Only 53,310 county voters cast a ballot in that election, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.
Source: Staff Report
Marshall Ney, spokesman for Keep Dollars in Benton County, the group sponsoring the initiative, said he expects petitions to be certified.
“It sounds like they have about 9,000 more signatures to check,” Ney said. “We feel confident that in those final 9,000 they will find more than enough to reach the ballot.”
Keep Dollars in Benton County needs 41,171 valid signatures.
Ney said the state required the group to bring in all of the signatures gathered during the petition process, and with 56,000 signatures he’s comfortable most voters support the proposal.
“We really have not received any indication that there’s any organized opposition,” he said. “It does seem like it’s time. The biggest obstacle in the past has been the financial hurdle of gathering the signatures of 30 percent of the almost 108,000 voters in Benton County. Now that we’ve removed the barrier, we’ve seen near universal support.”
O’Brien said she planned to have 13 people work today to get through the remaining signatures.
“We’ll be able to do it,” she said. “We started the day today with about 41,000 signatures checked and we’ve done 7,000, so we should be able to do that.”
O’Brien said her office has until Monday to validate the signatures and certify them to the state. Opposing parties have 10 days after that to challenge signatures in Circuit Court.
Keep Dollars in Benton County hired Georgia firm National Ballot Access to gather signatures. Company representatives were active at events and businesses around the county during the last several months. The effort has been paid for largely through donations from Steuart and Tom Walton along with support from convenience store chains Casey’s General Store, Kum & Go and E-Z Mart.
The group commissioned a study by the University of Arkansas’ Center for Business and Economic Research that indicated changing to a wet county would have a $33 million annual economic impact.