The emergency relief granted a motion to expedite, meaning Thurston will have until Monday, July 29 to perform the initial count of signatures collected by volunteer canvassers and provide the state supreme court with the findings.
The state Supreme Court also said a part of the motion of emergency relief could grant the petitioner, Arkansans for Limited Government, a thirty-day provisional cure period, meaning they will have 30 days starting Monday to collect the signatures they think they will need to fulfill the requirements for it to go on the ballot this November.
That might be new information I missed. Last I heard they were still removing any signatures collected by people who were hired. So only signatures collected by volunteers would count. Arkansans for Limited Government were fighting for more time since they were misled on the process.
https://apnews.com/article/abortion-petitions-arkansas-court-a789b60496e9103800ac890c4e2eb229
You are correct.
The order specifies signatures collected by volunteer canvassers. Because it does not specify all signatures, or explicitly includes those collected by paid canvassers, it’s likely the Secretary of State would omit those from their count.
It’s unclear what the 30-day provisional cure period would entail. It could simply be that they have 30 days to resubmit with the “missing” paperwork*, or 30 days to collect additional signatures, or merely 30 days to continue to argue in the courts.
* I’d like to highlight that the folks behind the campaign submitted all the necessary paperwork on June 27th, and they say they were told that they were not required to submit that paperwork again on July 5th, when they submitted the signatures.
That this is even an issue reeks of malfeasance and bureaucratic dumbfuckery. It should have been resolved quickly and quietly to allow the people of Arkansas a chance to directly participate in their legislative process.
A similar issue happened when medical cannabis was legalized. There were two competing amendments. The more popular amendment had more allowances. After the deadline for signatures, the state threw out whole pages for any issues with any signature they found.
So all that was left was the more restrictive amendment.