A local option ballot question committee, funded by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. of Bentonville and Kum & Go of West Des Moines, Iowa, filed an appeal Monday to the Arkansas Supreme Court seeking to allow Saline County residents to vote in the November general election on whether to legalize retail alcohol sales.
The filing came after last week’s ruling by Circuit Judge Grisham Phillips that 159 signatures turned in by Our Community, Our Dollars were not valid. It put the group 86 signatures shy of the threshold needed to get the initiative on the ballot.
The committee submitted 25,917 signatures July 7, and another 6,738 four weeks later. The Saline County Clerk’s Office validated 25,653 signatures, which surpassed the 25,580 needed, until last week’s ruling. Our Community, Our Dollars says there is another 720 signatures that have yet to be validated by the county clerk.
“These 720 Saline County residents signed the petition, voicing their opinion that they wanted the opportunity to vote on this issue in November,” Marshall Ney, attorney for the group, said in a news release. “The County Clerk’s office stopped counting signatures after the 25,580 threshold was met in order to avoid paying additional workers to continue to count. Regardless of that decision by the county clerk, the signatures are valid, and the 26,000-plus Saline County voters who signed the petition deserve an up or down vote on the issue.”
Our Community, Our Dollars started petition drives in three counties earlier this year, including Faulkner and Craighead counties, in an attempt to have votes on the legalization of retail alcohol sales. Saline County was the only where the signature threshold, 38 percent of the registered voters, was met by petitioners. Efforts were halted in Faulkner and Craighead counties — where opposition was organized — in July.
Last month, Arkansas Secretary of State Mark Martin announced the Arkansas Alcoholic Beverage Amendment would be on the general election ballot in November after meeting the 78,133 required signatures. The group, Let Arkansas Decide, was said to have turned in more than 127,000 signatures to be validated.
If the proposed amendment is approved, alcohol sales would be legalized in all counties in Arkansas.
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