Alcohol petition adds 6,332 pages

41,492 names sent to state

David Couch unloads boxes Friday outside the secretary of state’s office that he says contain petitions with more than 41,000 signatures in this 2014 file photo.

David Couch unloads boxes Friday outside the secretary of state’s office that he says contain petitions with more than 41,000 signatures in this 2014 file photo.

Saturday, August 16, 2014

Correction: If voters approve the proposed state constitutional amendment to allow alcohol sales statewide, counties and cities would no longer be allowed to hold local elections to disallow alcohol sales within their borders. This story incorrectly reported it would allow the option for local dry initiatives to continue.

Advocates for expanding the sale of alcohol in Arkansas submitted more than 41,000 signatures in a final effort to get a proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot in November.

David Couch, chairman of the group Let Arkansas Decide, delivered boxes with more than 6,300 petition pages to the Arkansas secretary of state's office about 3:30 p.m. Friday -- just days before the Monday deadline for signatures to be submitted.

The measure the group is supporting would eliminate the patchwork "wet" and "dry" designations for Arkansas' 75 counties and allow the sale of alcohol throughout the state with the exception of municipalities that vote themselves dry.

The state currently has 38 wet counties that allow alcohol sales and 37 dry counties that prohibit alcohol sales.

The group received approval for its ballot title and popular name late in the game, with just a month to gather the initial signature requirement of 78,133 -- 10 percent of the people who voted in the last governor's election -- to get the constitutional amendment on the ballot.

The group came up 17,133 signatures short, but cleared the hurdle that allowed it 30 extra days to "cure" the petitions by gathering more signatures. Couch said Friday that about 100 paid canvassers gathered 41,492 signatures on 6,332 pages of petitions during this round. He said he was confident at least 31,000 signatures would be approved.

"I am 100 percent confident that it is going to be certified by the secretary of state," he said. "And then, of course, I anticipate that the opponents will file some sort of lawsuit to try to take it off the ballot."

Opponents of the measure registered a ballot committee with the Arkansas Ethics Commission late last month named Let Local Communities Decide for Themselves. The group had not reported any contributions or spending in its first filing, and a prepaid cellphone listed on the registration form went right to a phone company recording that said the phone was "unavailable" Friday afternoon.

A lawyer for the group, Elizabeth Robben Murray with Friday, Eldredge & Clark LLP, said Friday that the opponents still planned to follow through with a challenge of the petition process if necessary.

"We're waiting for the secretary of state to decide if he's going to certify the ballot measure," Murray said. "If he does certify it, then we will file an original action with the [Arkansas] Supreme Court challenging it."

Murray sent a letter to the secretary of state's office July 21 arguing that the Seventh Amendment of the Arkansas Constitution requires petitions for constitutional amendments or initiated acts to be submitted no less than four months before election day. That date fell on July 4 this year, and Secretary of State Mark Martin issued a deadline of July 7 to accommodate for the holiday. Murray said there's no provision in the constitution allowing that postponement.

Couch said he's confident the July 7 deadline will hold up in court because it's been common practice for decades and has happened in other elections in recent years.

"Every legal decision that I'm aware of in Arkansas upholds that principle," he said.

A spokesman for Martin's office has said repeatedly that the office will move forward with its duties regardless of the letter or the potential challenge, which would have to be settled in court.

The office will have 30 days to certify that the group submitted enough qualified signatures to be on the ballot.

Meanwhile, another group of canvassers will spend the weekend working furiously in order to collect enough signatures by the 5 p.m. Monday deadline.

Give Arkansas a Raise Now is advocating for an initiative that would bump the state's minimum wage in three intervals from the current $6.25 an hour to $8.50 an hour by 2017. The measure, an initiated act that required 62,507 signatures, fell 15,107 short during the first round of canvassing. The group squeaked by with enough valid signatures to qualify for the "cure" period to gather more.

Group Chairman Steve Copley said Friday that he hoped to hand in signatures Monday morning. He said the group had corrected an issue with blurry or illegible petitions that caused 7,983 petition pages to be disqualified regardless of the signature validity.

"We corrected our printing issue before we started gathering any additional signatures, so we're confident that won't be a concern," he said. "We're still collecting signatures through the weekend. Some staff will focus on putting them in the correct count, sorting them and checking them over the next two days."

No groups have registered with the Arkansas Ethics Commission to launch formal opposition to the measure. Representatives from the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce and the Arkansas Hospitality Association said they had not heard much opposition from their members, many of whom are required to pay the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

Two groups did request to see the petitions qualified in the first round by the secretary of state's office, according to a Freedom of Information Act request -- Certa Financial Services and Maumelle attorney Belinda Harris-Ritter. The representative from Certa Financial, Sarah Parks, wrote that she wanted to review the petitions "out of a concern for excessive fraud and inaccuracies in the signature gathering process."

A Section on 08/16/2014