LITTLE ROCK — The lawyer for a businessman who opposes an effort to raise Arkansas’ minimum wage said Monday that placing the issue before voters would be an endorsement of fraud.
Lawyer David Sterling told the state Supreme Court in papers filed Monday that the proposal’s supporters used fraudulent means to win a spot on the Nov. 4 ballot. A special master of the Supreme Court said last week that 8,501 signatures should have been declared invalid — the case turns on when they should have been tossed out.
“But for fraud, this measure would not be on the ballot,” wrote Sterling, who represents Little Rock businessman Jackson T. Stephens. He asked the justices to prevent voters from considering the issue once early voting opens next Monday.
The group Give Arkansas a Raise Now needed to gather 62,507 signatures — 8 percent of the total vote in the most-recent gubernatorial election — to ask voters whether Arkansas should raise its minimum wage from $6.25 to $8.50 by 2017. It submitted more than 64,000 signatures on July 7.
Under state election law, groups that meet the target are given an extra 30 days to gather additional signatures in case any from the original set are declared invalid. Eventually, GARN submitted nearly 90,000 signatures.
The court special master said in a report to the Supreme Court last week that 8,501 signatures were invalid because of a forged notary signature, but told justices the invalid names should be subtracted from the final figure, not the original group of signatures.
If they had been deleted from the initial set, GARN would have fallen short of the number needed to qualify for the 30-day period to “cure” bad signatures — essentially killing the initiative.
The petition-gatherers said that, based on what it knew then, the Secretary of State’s office properly granted them another 30 days to solicit signatures. They said enough signatures were on the petitions but only the “form” was incorrect.
“Almost 90,000 voters properly signed the petition,” they wrote in asking the court to let the voters decide.
In paperwork that it also filed Monday, the state said the court should rule for the “appropriate party” and said the petition’s backers met state deadlines, which had also been questioned.
Justices said they would not hear oral arguments.
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