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Casino Backers Sue Over AG Rejections
 Backers of a proposed constitutional amendment to allow casino gaming in Arkansas
have sued the state's Attorney General after she again rejected their proposed ballot title and amendment.
With time running out to collect voter signatures for the proposal, attorney Alex
Gray filed the lawsuitTuesday with the Arkansas Supreme Court on behalf of Driving Arkansas Forward.
Driving Arkansas Forward is petitioning the court to order Attorney General Leslie Rutledge to approve the
group's casino ballot title and establish that the wording of the ballot title is
"honest and impartial, free of any misleading tendency, and conveys an intelligible
idea of the scope and significance of the proposed change in the law ..."
Gray has asked the Supreme Court to order Rutledge to certify the ballot proposal
in three days or less.
Time is of the essence. June 6 is the deadline for ballot issue groups to publish
the title of their proposed constitutional amendment in newspapers statewide. There
also is the rapidly approaching July 6 deadline to submit voter signatures to the
Secretary of State's Office.
Ballot groups can't collect any voter signatures until after the Attorney General
approves their ballot title.
Driving Arkansas Forward has to collect 84,859 signatures from registered voters in
Arkansas. Most ballot initiative groups collect thousands more signatures to make
up for flawed signatures found during the Secretary of State's review process.
Rutledge has rejected Driving Arkansas Forward's proposal four times, and has rejected
dozens of other proposals from groups seeking a spot on the November ballot. A recreational
marijuana proposal has been rejected more than 10 times. The only group cleared to
collect voter signatures is the Arkansas Term Limits Amendment and that approval happened
in October 2016.
"In recent years, the Arkansas Supreme Court has set a very high standard for certifying
a ballot proposal. As Attorney General, I have a responsibility to follow those standards
to ensure that voters fully understand the issue presented on the ballot and what
exactly a 'for' or 'against' vote means," she told the news outlet.
Voters in November will decide the fate of two constitutional amendments proposed
by the legislature, Issue 1 (SJR8) and Issue 2 (HJR1016).
Get Engaged. Get Informed.
The Public Policy Center has published nonpartisan fact sheets on Arkansas' statewide ballot issues since 2004. We welcome your questions at publicpolicycenter@uada.edu. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter and look for our posts with the hashtag #ARballot .
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