Arkansas abortion amendment gets more than 100,000 backers

The backers of a measure to allow Arkansas voters the chance to loosen the state's near-total abortion ban said Friday they submitted more than 100,000 signatures, more than enough to qualify for the November ballot. 

Friday marked the deadline for Arkansas ballot question committees to submit their petitions, a major milestone which will determine whether ballot measures on matters from the state Freedom of Information Act to medical marijuana, will go before voters.

Rebecca Bobrow, director of strategy at Arkansans for Limited Government, which is pushing the abortion rights measure, said Monday that the campaign was then around 10,000 signatures shy of their goal. That means, even after months of steady progress in gathering signatures, the fate of the abortion amendment came down to the last few days of fast-paced campaigning.

“I suspect it is going to be close and come down to the wire,” she said in an email. “It's certainly an exciting/stressful race to the finish line.”

“If you can believe it,” she said in a text Friday morning, “more (signature) packets are still being turned into us as we speak.”

The abortion amendment.

If voted up in November, the proposed state constitutional amendment would loosen the near-total abortion ban currently on the books in Arkansas, which allows for abortion only to save the life of the mother.

Under the amendment, abortion would be allowed for up to 18 weeks from fertilization and in the cases of rape, incest, fatal fetal anomaly and to protect the health of the mother.

In-depth:A fight for abortion rights in America's most pro-life state could ripple across the South

Committees that meet the threshold for signatures will advance to the statewide ballot in the general election. For initiated constitutional amendments that number is 90,704, or 10% of total votes in the last gubernatorial election, and for initiated state statutes, 72,563 signatures, or 8%.

Under a recent law, those signatures need to be collected across 50 out of Arkansas' 75 counties, rather than the 15 specified in the constitution.

After signatures are submitted to the Secretary of State, the office has 30 days to inform the ballot question committees whether they qualify and if they need to cure any of the signatures they’ve submitted.

According to the Secretary of State’s office, committees will be notified as they're found to be officially eligible and ballot questions should be publicly certified by Aug. 22.

'As the deadline approaches,' abortion measure backs set daily records

According to Bobrow, Arkansans for Limited Government collected close to 1,000 signatures on Monday and nearly 4,000 on Tuesday. Each of those daily counts set in-house records for signature gathering during the work week.

“We've seen week-over-week rates increase by significant amounts over the last 6 weeks,” she wrote Wednesday.

“Ask any teacher you know, nearly 100% of folks turn their homework in right as the deadline approaches. This is no different.”

An unexpected wrinkle emerged in the last days as an unidentified person or group sent out a blast email Thursday, claiming to be Arkansans for Limited Government and saying that organizers and volunteers should stop collecting signatures.

“It’s OVER!!” the email read.

“We have more than enough signatures now, so we hope everyone takes the day to enjoy the rest of the holiday and CELEBRATE this victory!”

On Friday, Bobrow said that she didn’t think the emails had much impact, since the committee quickly sent out emails debunking the fake ones, though she was disturbed to think hostile actors had gotten ahold of their mailing lists.

What other ballot measures qualified?

Arkansans for Limited Government isn’t the only group that saw a close call at the end.

Bill Kopsky is a board member of the committee For AR Kids, which is pushing for a constitutional amendment that would guarantee universal access to pre-K, special education for children in poverty, after school and summer programs, cement quality standards for public schools, and require private schools accepting vouchers to comply with state standards.

He said Wednesday that he was “nervous.” With less than two days left to collect signatures, the committee was still around 25,000 signatures shy of the threshold. Still, he said, “I think we’re on a trajectory” to meet it. “We just have people really coming out of the woodwork” to sign, he said.

Other committees cruised right past the minimum well before the deadline.

Bill Paschall, a board member of Arkansans for Patient Access, a ballot question committee advancing a state constitutional amendment that would allow pharmacists, nurse practitioners and physicians’ assistants to prescribe medical marijuana and allow patients to grow it at home, said on Wednesday that the committee had already passed the threshold.

By its count, Paschall said, Arkansans for Patient Access already had “100,000-plus” signatures, at least 10,000 more than they need.

But his committee continued to collect signatures and has also seen upticks in collection over the last few weeks, but the intense heat has also blunted that trend.

“That's probably the biggest deterrent right now to canvassers,” he said. “It’s just hot out there.”

The committee Local Citizens in Charge, pushing for county-level control over the decision to build new casinos, reported more than 162,000 signatures Friday morning.

Not all ballot question committees are so open with their signature counts. Katie Clark, chair of the Arkansas Period Poverty Project, which is seeking to eliminate sales tax on menstrual products and diapers, said in an email Monday that the group wasn’t planning on releasing any figures until all its signatures were verified by the Secretary of State’s office.

Clark explained that caution, saying, “We may think that we’ve reached the required number of signatures but (the Secretary of State) may still throw some (signatures) out for various reasons.”

Nonetheless, she said, “We’re feeling very good about our chances!”