Summary
The Arkansas Supreme Court reviewed a challenge to the sufficiency of signatures submitted for the Arkansas Term Limits Amendment. The court upheld the special master's exclusion of signatures based on false canvasser affidavits, failures to complete required sworn statements, untimely canvasser lists, and a canvasser's felony conviction, concluding that insufficient valid signatures remained for the amendment to appear on the ballot. The court granted the petition and ordered that the mandate issue immediately.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether the special master clearly erred by excluding signatures associated with canvassers' allegedly false current-residence affidavits.
- Whether signatures collected by paid canvassers before they executed the sworn statement required by Arkansas Code Annotated section 7-9-601(d)(3) were properly excluded.
- Whether signatures collected before the sponsor submitted an accessible list of paid canvassers to the Secretary of State were properly excluded.
- Whether signatures collected by a paid canvasser with a felony conviction were properly excluded.
- Whether the intervenor preserved its challenges to the special master's treatment of certain exhibits and signature data.
- Whether the paid-canvasser registration requirements violated the First Amendment, the Arkansas Constitution, due process, or constitutional vagueness principles.
- Whether the court should adopt a different standard of review for statewide initiative-petition signature challenges.
Holdings
- The special master did not clearly err in excluding 4,371 signatures because the canvassers' current-residence addresses on the petition parts were false or invalid under the statutory requirements.
- The special master did not clearly err in excluding 1,988 signatures collected by paid canvassers who had not executed the required sworn statements before collecting signatures.
- The special master did not clearly err in excluding 3,088 signatures collected before the sponsor submitted an accessible and usable list of paid canvassers to the Secretary of State.
- The special master did not clearly err in excluding 479 signatures collected by a paid canvasser who had a felony conviction when he began collecting signatures.
- The court declined to review arguments that the special master failed to consider particular exhibits or cross-reference signature data because the intervenor did not obtain a ruling on those specific issues.
- The court rejected the intervenor's First Amendment, Arkansas constitutional, and vagueness challenges to the paid-canvasser requirements, and rejected its due-process challenge to the procedures used in the case.
Key quotations
“We conclude that the special master was correct in his finding that there were insufficient signatures to keep the amendment on the ballot; we therefore grant the petition.” (389)
“To interpret the word "shall" as permissive would lead to an absurd result, which this court will not do.” (391-392)
“Due process requires that, at a minimum, a person be given notice and a reasonable opportunity for a hearing before he or she is deprived of property by state action.” (394)
Factual background
On July 6, 2018, Arkansas Term Limits submitted 135,590 signatures for the Arkansas Term Limits Amendment. The Secretary of State certified the petition for the November 6, 2018 ballot, determining that no more than 93,998 signatures were valid and that 84,859 were required. After a special-master proceeding, the master found that thousands of signatures had been improperly counted because of false current-residence affidavits, missing sworn statements, untimely or inaccessible canvasser lists, and a canvasser's felony conviction.
Procedural history
Randy Zook filed an original action challenging the popular name and ballot title and the sufficiency of signatures supporting the Arkansas Term Limits Amendment. The Supreme Court bifurcated the proceedings, allowed Arkansas Term Limits to intervene, and appointed Mark Hewitt as special master to review the collected signatures. The special master concluded that 14,806 signatures had been erroneously included in the Secretary of State's count, leaving fewer than the required number; the Supreme Court upheld the relevant findings and granted the petition.