On March 5, the Arkansas Supreme Court invalidated two restrictions on initiative petitions, but upheld some other restrictions. All of the restrictions challenged in the lawsuit had been passed in 2013. The case is McDaniel v Spencer, cv-14-599. Here is the 28-page decision.
The restrictions struck down are: (1) the law that says after the petition is filed, the organization sponsoring the petition cannot collect any more signatures until election officials finish counting how many signatures in the first batch are valid; (2) the law that says if a petition sheet has signatures of residents of more than one county, then the entire sheet is invalid.
The restrictions upheld are: (1) a requirement that each signer include his or her date of birth on the petition; (2) extensive record-keeping for initiative proponents who use paid circulators; (3) a requirement that each paid circulator submit a picture that is less than 3 months old; (4) a ban on paid circulators previously convicted of certain crimes; (5) the law that if any signer is “disabled” and therefore can’t fill in all the blanks on the petition, the circulator who helps fill in some blanks must sign and print his or her name on the margin of the petition next to the signature of the assisted signer; (6) the law that all paid circulators must reveal their current residence address as well as their permanent address.
The Arkansas Supreme Court has seven members. Three justices would have invalidated all the challenged laws; two justices would have upheld all the challenged laws; only the remaining two justices agree with the entire decision that some laws are valid and others are invalid.
These rulings make absolutely no sense at all.You talk about dotting the “i’s” and crossing the “t’s” this is the classic case. I don’t know if my neurological situation is getting worse, but I seem to be floating as I attempted to read and make sense of this ruling. And NO, I was not drinking. At any rate, it is a fuzzing ruling. Perhaps the Court was dong the drinking when they made their ruling? When I come back to my mind later today, hopefully someone else will have read this and can make better sense of it. It is a dumb ruling regardless of what my state of mind is at the moment.
1. What robot party hack gerrymander incumbent is NOT an Enemy of the People ???
2. ALL initiative language must be in a State Const with ZERO discretion for the robot party hacks to mess with it —
MUST be *self-enforcing*.