The People Have Spoken, So Let Them Speak (Editorial)

Last Tuesday, Saline County became the seventh county in Arkansas to switch from “dry” to “wet” under the onerous law that requires proponents to collect signatures from 38 percent of registered voters just to get the referendum on the ballot.

On the same day, voters statewide — including voters in Saline County — soundly rejected the idea that all counties in the state should be wet. That being dry should not be an option.

The liquor store industry, the same folks who in the 1990s persuaded legislators to make it two and half times harder to get a wet-dry initiative on a local ballot, spent a couple of million dollars to persuade voters that local control is sacred. 

Ah, well, it’s not the first time and it won’t be the last time that self-serving hypocrisy succeeded at the polls.

As it happens, we too think that voters in individual counties should be able to decide whether they want alcohol to be readily available. The fact that 100 percent of the counties that have had the question on the ballot in the past decade have decided to go wet does not imply that all counties would make the same decision. It only suggests that if you can get 38 percent of your voters to ask for a wet county, you can then get 50 percent plus one to vote for it.

So now that we have widespread agreement that the alcohol decision should be made locally, we call on the Legislature to return the 38 percent signature requirement to 15 percent so that it is not unduly burdensome for voters to have local control. 

Just like the liquor industry says they deserve.