On Tuesday night, the Arkansas Supreme Court handed down an order directing Secretary of State John Thurston to begin counting volunteer signatures for the Arkansas Abortion Amendment. Here’s the relevant section of the order:
The next day, Attorney General Tim Griffin, who’s attempting to defend that choice in the Court, had this to say:
“I am pleased with the Arkansas Supreme Court’s narrow order directing the Secretary
of State to perform an initial count only of signatures collected by volunteer canvassers on behalf of Arkansans for Limited Government. AFLG failed to meet all legal requirements to have the signatures collected by paid canvassers counted, a failure for which they have only themselves to blame.”
A reasonable statement, as it were… if he was talking about an entirely different case.
Let’s break down all the ways his statement doesn’t reflect the reality of the Court’s order, starting from the bottom.
Right now, the Supreme Court is upholding the law and gave AFLG several important wins, but this legal fight isn’t over.
AFLG didn’t fail to meet all legal requirements for paid canvassers
AFLG complied with every aspect of state law: they turned in the lists of paid canvassers; they turned in affidavits from those canvassers stating the canvassers had received proper training; and they turned in a statement from the paid canvassers’ sponsor – their boss, acting as an agent of AFLG – that the canvassers had been trained.
This whole thing started, remember, because Thurston lied multiple times about what AFLG turned in before the media called him on it and he finally produced the entire slate of documents, so at this point, I’m not really sure how much we can trust John and Tim to accurately represent the facts.
This order is not particularly “narrow”
On the surface, Griffin’s correct: the only immediate action the Court is forcing Secretary Thurston to take is to begin counting volunteer signatures. But, like many things couched in legalese, this order is extremely hostile to Griffin and Thurston.
In his original motion before the Court, Griffin argued quite a few things. Here’s three of his arguments that are significant:
- The Court didn’t even have jurisdiction to hear this case because the petition was technically never turned in.
- Even if the Court did have jurisdiction, it should dismiss the case because the Secretary was right to dismiss the petition without counting all the signatures.
- Even if the Secretary wasn’t right to dismiss the petition without counting all volunteer signatures, he could still dismiss the petition because the paid canvasser signatures don’t count, and therefore, the petition didn’t hit the required number of signatures.
In that short little order, the Court rebuked all of those arguments. They do claim jurisdiction over this case. The Secretary did break the law in refusing to count volunteer signatures. And the petition might still hit the signature count because – get this – Thurston has already counted the paid signatures as a “courtesy.” Here’s a quote from the last paragraph of his first letter on July 10:
“As a courtesy to you, I instructed my office to determine the initial count of signatures gathered by paid canvassers in your putative [supposed or assumed] submission. That number was 14,143.”
The Court, contrary to what Griffin’s statement implies, doesn’t need to order Thurston to count signatures gathered by paid canvassers because he already did.
I don’t want to overstate AFLG’s case right now because there are still a number of legal issues that must still be decided. This order, however, is a win for AFLG. The Court granted their motion to speed up the case, it claims jurisdiction, and it confirms what we all knew: Thurston broke the law in refusing to count volunteer signatures.
Let me say that again so no one misses it.
Thurston overstepped his statutory authority and trampled on the rights of 101,525 voting Arkansans by refusing to count signatures.
The Attorney General is defending that violation of the law and continuing to tramble on our rights.
Folks, they’re willing to break the law to avoid hearing your voice. What are we going to do about it?
