A Johnson County Circuit Court judge ordered petitions decertified Monday that would have put liquor sales in the dry county to a vote in November.
Circuit Judge William Pearson ordered the decertification at the request of County Clerk Michelle Frost, who said in a response to a lawsuit challenging the validity of the liquor sales petitions that the lawsuit was correct, and there was an insufficient number of signatures to qualify the question for the Nov. 8 general election ballot.
The group that sponsored the yearlong petition drive, Keep Our Dollars in Johnson County, dropped its bid to intervene in the case following Frost's statement.
"The clerk filed a pleading today saying the signatures were insufficient and the case was then dismissed," according to a statement released Monday by Keep Our Dollars in Johnson County. "Our local committee members and volunteers have been working hard for months to give the people of Johnson County an opportunity to vote on whether to allow alcohol sales here -- something we haven't had the chance to do in more than 80 years.
"We received overwhelming support from folks around the community as evidenced by the thousands of signatures we submitted to the clerk. We're, of course, disappointed that the measure will not be certified for the ballot but we accept today's outcome."
A trial on the lawsuit, which was filed Aug. 19 by a group of Conway County liquor store owners called the Stand Strong Stay Dry Be Safe Committee, was scheduled for Wednesday. Frost was named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
Frost on Aug. 10 had certified 5,441 signatures on petitions submitted by Keep Our Dollars in Johnson County. The number was 13 signatures more than the 5,428 required by law.
A response to the lawsuit was filed Monday on Frost's behalf. The response said that after Frost reviewed the Stand Strong committee's lawsuit "and through information gained in the discovery process," she realized that there were insufficient valid signatures to certify the petition for the general election ballot.
The Stand Strong committee said the county clerk didn't follow the law involving petition pages containing signatures from people living in other counties.
In its lawsuit, the Stand Strong committee said that according to Arkansas Code Annotated 3-8-811(b)(6), the signatures on petition pages may not be counted if signatures from residents from other counties appear on those pages and are not clearly stricken before being submitted to the county clerk.
"Here, the clerk mistakenly accepted the additional signatures appearing on petition parts [pages] that contained the un-stricken signature of a non-Johnson County resident," the lawsuit stated.
Frost said Monday that she did not count the signatures of people from other counties, but she did not throw out the entire pages, including their valid signatures, as state law requires.
According to an exhibit attached to the Stand Strong committee's lawsuit, the petitions contained 615 signatures that were accepted but should have been disqualified because they were on petition pages that also had signatures that Keep Our Dollars in Johnson County did not strike through, even though they were from residents of other counties.
There were 154 pages of petitions that contained signatures of non-Johnson County residents, according to the exhibit. The signers were from places such as Fort Smith, Little Rock, Springdale, Paris, Mena and Cabot. One signer was from Uvalde, Texas.
State Desk on 08/30/2016