The group that submitted the petitions Friday did not submit an affidavit identifying paid canvassers by name, as required by state law, Thurston wrote in a Wednesday letter to Lauren Cowles, executive director of Arkansans for Limited Government, the ballot question committee supporting the proposed constitutional amendment.

State law also requires ballot question committees to provide “a copy of the most recent edition of the Secretary of State’s initiatives and referenda handbook to each paid canvasser” and to explain to canvassers the legal requirements for soliciting signatures before canvassing begins.

AFLG did not fulfill these requirements while the sponsors of other proposed ballot measures did, Thurston wrote. //

The AFLG appealed to the Arkansas Supreme Court, which ordered a recount of the signatures. That recount certified 87.675 signatures as legitimate and Thurston's decision was upheld. //

Today's ruling seems to have put the issue to rest for this election cycle.

“We find that the secretary correctly refused to count the signatures collected by paid canvassers because the sponsor failed to file the paid canvasser training certification,” the majority wrote. //

Having lost the fight to create a US Constitutional right out of whole cloth, they are now working to enshrine the right to infanticide in state constitutions. There are nine other states with pro-abort constitutional amendments on the ballot in November: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, New York, Nevada, and South Dakota. A pro-abort amendment was added to the Ohio constitution in 2023. //

C. S. P. Schofield
42 minutes ago
While I believe that abortion should be legal, under clear restrictions, I fully expect to see it widely banned before I die, simply because the Abortion Establishment is arrogant. They had decades to persuade the public and instead condescended and relied on a SCOTUS ruling that any amateur student of Law could have told them was built on thin air.

Even since Roe was overturned, they have not realized that they must play by the rules. They preach to the choir and indulge in peruse fantasies like THE HANDMAID’S TALE, an unoriginal piece of thinly disguised Dom/Sub pornography that stole its central repressive theocracy from Heinlein’s future history.

If the Pro-Life forces can refrain from mirroring the arrogance of the Abortion Establishment, they will continue to win most of their goals, until legal abortion is available only in a few Deep Blue strongholds.

And, as the Kermit Gosnell scandal proved, there isn’t necessarily any great difference between a legal abortion clinic and the ‘back alley abortionist’ of legend.