Sympathy For the Devil (Editorial)

Arkansas Business is unequivocally opposed to Issue 5, the outrageous proposal to write the names of private companies into the state constitution in order to give them special privileges.

In this case, the private companies would operate casinos in three Arkansas counties whether the residents there want them or not. But it isn’t expansion of casino gambling that we object to; to open the state up to expanded gambling is a fair question to put to voters. What we object to is this proposal and earlier ones like it that cynically seek to turn parts of our state constitution into private property.

That said, it’s possible to sympathize with the backers of Issue 5 who are waiting to learn whether their work will be thrown off the Nov. 8 ballot because they failed to thread the needle of the state’s ever more difficult requirements for getting voter-initiated issues on the ballot.

John Jennings, a special master appointed by the Arkansas Supreme Court, determined that the proponents didn’t collect quite enough signatures by the early deadline in July to have earned more time to get enough signatures by the final deadline. The shortage was a matter of a few hundred when, ultimately, more than 100,000 Arkansans signaled that they wanted it on the ballot. (Whether they understood that they were being asked to set a national precedent by inserting Missouri-owned companies into the Arkansas constitution would be a matter of pure speculation.)

The Arkansas General Assembly set out to make it harder for citizens to initiate acts and amendments, and it succeeded. Issue 5’s readiness for the ballot is also complicated by question of whether canvassers had proper background checks. As we have noted previously, when the subject is making dry counties wet, an entire page of signatures can be thrown out if a single one is invalid.

We think writing private companies into the state constitution should itself be unconstitutional. But getting a question on the ballot should not be this hard.