On October 27, the Arkansas Supreme Court voted 5-2 to remove one of the two medical marijuana initiatives from the November 8 ballot, even though everyone agrees that the petition had enough signatures of registered voters. Benca v Martin, cv-16-785. The majority opinion is fifteen pages; the two dissents are seven pages. Here is the opinion.
The initiative needed 67,887 signatures. Proponents submitted 117,547. The Secretary of State determined that 77,516 signatures were valid. But a voter challenged the Secretary of State’s determination, so the matter was sent to a special master who examined all of the disputed signatures. The master determined that another 2,087 signatures should be invalidated, but that still left enough valid signatures. The master’s report was issued on September 27, and the state then went ahead with ballot printing, leaving the initiative on the ballot.
But then the State Supreme Court majority invalidated some more signatures, not on the grounds that the signatures weren’t valid, but because the proponent of the initiative did not furnish all the paid circulators with a copy of the state’s handbook for circulators. Also some signatures were invalidated because the employer had not done a police background check on some of the circulators; or, if he had, he did not report the date of the police check accurately. Some more signatures were invalidated because the circulator used a Post Office address instead of a physical residence address. As a result, the Court held the petition was short 2,475 signatures.
There is another medical marijuana initiative on the ballot, issue Six. No one challenged the Issue Six petition validity, although Issue Six was challenged for having a misleading title. However, on October 13, the State Supreme Court had ruled that the Issue Six title is proper.
The Arkansas Supreme Court is one of the few State Supreme Courts in the nation with a female majority; the other such states are California, New Mexico, and New York. In the Benca decision, all four females on the court voted to remove the initiative from the ballot, whereas a majority of the male justices voted to leave the measure on the ballot. Thanks to Andy Craig for the news.
The special master was appointed by the Supreme Court, which had original jurisdiction.
The court agreed with the special master’s count of certain signatures, but disagreed with how they should be interpreted. The bulk of the disqualified signatures were collected by circulators, where there was some ambiguity as to whether they were paid circulators or not, but that the sponsors had indicated were paid, or who had agreed to be paid if the sponsors received more contributions. The special master also disagreed as to whether there was any penalty for non-compliance with mandatory requirements.
I followed up on this: Ballot Measure #7 Arkansas Medical Cannabis Act won. At the Arkansas Secretary of State’s website reveals that the court will not and not certify the votes for medical cannabis. They will not count or certify votes for lawyer contingency fees or casinos either. http://www.sos.arkansas.gov/elections/Pages/initiativeReferendums.aspx