Alcohol measure certified for ballot

Arkansas voters will be asked in November whether they want to allow the sale, manufacture and transportation of alcohol throughout the state, after a constitutional amendment was certified to appear on the ballot by the secretary of state's office late Friday.

The amendment, which would allow the sale of alcohol in every county and municipality in the state, will likely still face a legal challenge, opponents said. But supporters of the measure said they plan to start campaigning immediately.

"I'm going to have a beer to celebrate," said attorney David Couch, chairman of the ballot committee Let Arkansas Decide. "The [secretary of state's elections staff] contacted me this afternoon saying we had 87,102 valid signatures and they were going to certify the amendment now because we had reached the magic number of more than 10 percent over what we needed."

Couch spearheaded the campaign to get the initiative before voters, submitting the first batch of signatures on July 7. There weren't enough valid signatures to certify the measure for the ballot immediately, but there were enough to allow the group to have another 30 days to collect more signatures.

To qualify, supporters needed to collect 78,133 valid signatures.

The group came up 17,133 signatures short on its first effort. Couch submitted an additional 41,492 signatures to "cure" the petition on Aug. 16.

A spokesman for the secretary of state's office said the valid-signatures count might increase because staff members were still validating signatures, but the amendment had hit the number required to certify the Arkansas Alcoholic Beverage Amendment, which will appear as Issue No. 4 on ballots across the state.

Currently, state law allows local communities to vote on whether they want to allow the sale of alcohol. Of the state's 75 counties, 38 are wet and generally allow alcohol sales; the other 37 are dry counties and typically prohibit alcohol sales. Individual municipalities can vote to allow or prohibit alcohol sales.

Opponents of the statewide measure said a vote against the amendment in November would mean local communities would keep the right to determine whether to allow alcohol sales.

"People in Arkansas by nature are very independent people. And we feel that decisions like this are better left up to people in their local community, and that it sets a dangerous precedent for other local rights if this were to pass," said Brian Richardson, chairman of Citizens for Local Rights, a ballot measure group formerly called Let Local Communities Decide for Themselves.

"It needs to be noted that if this passes, counties will not have any avenue to vote on this at a local level ever again. This permanently removes all local say in alcohol sales. We have questions about whether that would mean you can't prohibit alcohol sales within [so many] feet of a church or a school or a day care," he said.

An attorney representing the group, Elizabeth Robben Murray with Friday, Eldredge & Clark LLP, could not be reached for comment late Friday. She said earlier this month that she planned to file an action with the Supreme Court challenging the ballot measure if the secretary of state's office certified the petitions.

Richardson said he didn't want to comment on legal matters, but said the group is prepared to fight the measure through every avenue available.

Murray contended in a letter sent to the secretary of state's office in July that the measure should not be certified regardless of the signature counts, arguing that the Seventh Amendment of the Arkansas Constitution requires petitions for constitutional amendments or initiated acts to be submitted no less than four months before Election Day. That date fell on Friday, July 4 this year. Because of the holiday, Secretary of State Mark Martin moved the deadline to Monday, July 7. Murray said there's no provision in the constitution allowing that postponement.

Couch said he is ready to defend the measure.

"We are 100 percent prepared for that court case should they file it," he said. "I know what their issue is. We've researched it. We feel very confident that any court challenge on those grounds would be denied."

The court case would also affect a second ballot measure, a proposed initiated act that if approved would increase the state's minimum wage from $6.25 an hour to $8.50 an hour in three increments by January 2017. Laura Labay, spokesman for the secretary of state's office, said election staff members are continuing to validate the minimum-wage initiative's signatures and she didn't expect that process to be finished until after the Labor Day holiday.

A section on 08/30/2014

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