On May 30, the Arkansas Green Party submitted 18,000 signatures to the Secretary of State’s office, to qualify for party status. The statutory law requires slightly over 24,000 signatures. However, that law was declared unconstitutional in 1996. Arkansas appealed the 1996 ruling, but then dropped its own appeal, and now tries to pretend that the 1996 ruling doesn’t exist. The Associated Press reporter who covered this story doesn’t seem to know about the 1996 ruling, which is called Citizens to Establish a Reform Party v Priest, 970 F Supp 690. That decision said it is unconstitutional for Arkansas to require more than 10,000 signatures for a new party, since Arkansas requires that many signatures for statewide non-presidential independent candidates.