LITTLE ROCK – Hundreds of paid workers have been gathering signatures for initiative campaigns around Arkansas as they try to meet this week’s deadline to submit petitions to get their proposals on the November ballot, according to documents filed with the secretary of state’s office.
Five campaigns have reported using paid workers for their petition drives under a 2013 law requiring them to file lists of paid canvassers. The largest number of canvassers was reported by Health Care Access for Arkansans, which listed 290 workers gathering signatures for its proposed constitutional amendment to limit damages in lawsuits against health care providers. Meanwhile, one of two ballot measures to legalize medical marijuana and an effort to allow casinos in three Arkansas counties each registered about 260 paid canvassers.
Friday is the deadline to file signatures for proposed ballot measures. Amendments need at least 84,859 signatures from registered voters, while initiated acts need at least 67,887 signatures.
David Couch, who is leading Arkansans United for Medical Marijuana, said his group needed paid canvassers to reach more parts of the state since many private businesses around Arkansas won’t allow gatherers on their property.
“The lack of places to gather signatures makes it much more difficult,” Couch said. “You have to have more people to hit more and more smaller locations.”
More: Read more about Couch’s efforts to change Arkansas’ laws.
The canvasser lists for Couch’s group and Arkansas Wins in 2016, which has proposed an amendment legalizing casinos in three counties, are nearly identical, since both groups are using Georgia-based National Ballot Access for their canvassers.
The campaigns said the lists don’t necessarily represent the number of paid workers who are actively gathering signatures for their petitions, and said they’re also relying on volunteer gatherers. Couch said he currently has about 125 paid canvassers actively gathering signatures for his proposal.
A spokesman for Health Care Access for Arkansans said roughly half of the 290 paid canvassers it has registered with the state are actively gathering signatures. The group hired Colorado-based 3.0 LLC for its signature gathering effort.
Previously: Arkansas Business reported in February about all the initiatives aiming to gather signatures for the November ballot.
Arkansas Wins, the pro-casino group, said it’s relying on paid canvassers primarily because of the short time frame it had for circulating petitions. The wording of the proposed constitutional amendment was approved June 1, giving the group a little over a month to gather signatures.
“For us the need to ramp up as large a canvassing effort as possible was the greatest,” said Robert Coon, a spokesman for the casino campaign. Coon said roughly 200 of the paid canvassers it has registered with the state are actively gathering signatures.
Restore Term Limits, a group that has proposed an amendment imposing stricter term limits on state legislators, registered 189 paid canvassers with the state. The group last month reported paying Michigan-based Liberty Petition Projects LLC to manage its petition drive.
The canvasser registry is part of a 2013 law that was enacted in response to fraudulent signatures submitted by ballot measures in the 2012 election. The restrictions were blocked during the 2014 election because of a legal challenge, but the state Supreme Court last year upheld most of the canvassing law. In addition to registering canvassers with the state, campaigns also have to ensure that they pass a criminal background check.
Democratic Sen. Keith Ingram, who was the lead sponsor of the 2013 law, said the registry and other restrictions were needed to give the state more oversight over paid canvassers and to prevent them from knowingly submitting false signatures.
“I think there is a vast difference between paid canvassers that are incentivized by the signature versus free volunteers that are community based,” Ingram said.
Not all of the campaigns vying for a spot on the ballot are relying primarily on paid workers to circulate their petitions. Arkansans for Compassionate Care, which last month submitted more than 117,000 signatures for its proposed initiated act, only registered 22 paid canvassers with the state. Melissa Fults, the group’s campaign director, said most of the paid canvassers were initially volunteers who had quit or taken leaves of absence from their jobs to circulate petitions. The secretary of state’s office is reviewing the marijuana group’s petitions, and it could get another 30 days to circulate petitions if at least 75 percent of its signatures are valid.
“Why pay somebody when to me it’s more important for someone to have the passion and care about an initiative enough to stand out in the hot and the cold?” Fults said.
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