LITTLE ROCK — Supporters of a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow a private company to own and operate multiple casinos in Arkansas fell short of turning in the signatures of 78,133 registered voters to qualify the proposal for the Nov. 6 general election ballot, a spokesman for the secretary of state’s office said Monday.
Nancy Todd of Nancy Todd’s Poker Palace and Entertainment Venues LLC now has 30 more days to collect enough signatures of registered voters on her petition to qualify her proposal for the ballot, said Alex Reed, a spokesman for Secretary of State Mark Martin.
Todd said she submitted 80,373 signatures on her petition to the secretary of state’s office July 6.
Reed said Monday night that the secretary of state’s office had verified 23,616 signatures of registered voters.
The proposed amendment would allow Nancy Todd’s Poker Palace and Entertainment Venues LLC to own and operate a casino in each of Pulaski, Miller, Franklin and Crittenden counties.
Todd said she had expected “a precipitous drop” in the number of signatures that the secretary of state’s office was able to verify on her petition from the 80,373 turned in.
She said backers of the proposed amendment could be roughly 50,000 to 55,000 short of the 78,133 signatures of registered voters required to get the proposal on the ballot.
But Todd said she believes supporters of the proposed constitutional amendment will be able to gather enough signatures of registered voters to get the proposal on the ballot.
“We are doing a massive voter registration effort,” Todd said in an interview.
Earlier Monday, she said a voter registration effort since July 6 has registered almost 4,000 Arkansans and “we expect to reach 10,000 by the end of the week.
“It would seem fair [that] people who registered to vote by the time the petitions are verified should be counted as a valid signature by a registered voter, but it would seem here in Arkansas that just isn’t the case,” Todd said in a news release.
“We are required to register people and deliver their signature to the county clerk that same day for the signature to be counted as valid. Not only is this unfair to the petitioners, it would seem to prejudice getting people involved in the political process,” she said.
Reed said the requirement is a petition signer has to be a registered voter at the time he signs a petition, and a person becomes a registered voter when they are registered by the county clerk.
“Someone registering to vote may turn in their application whenever. The sooner they do, the sooner they will be a registered voter,” he said.
Nancy Todd’s Poker Palace and Entertainment Venues LLC is one of three committees promoting the proposed constitutional amendment. The two other committees are called Arkansas Counts and Arkansas Development LLC.
The three committees have reported raising $241,765 and spending $217,958. Evergreen Investments of Lebanon, Mo., has provided $195,000, and SKAP Investments of Branson, Mo .,chipped in $30,000.
An anti-casino group - Stop Casinos Now! Committee - has reported raising $599,090 and spending $547,262 with all its funds provided by Delaware North Cos. of Buffalo, N.Y., the parent company of Southland Park dog racing track in West Memphis.
On Friday, Martin rejected a request for more time to collect more signatures to qualify for the ballot a different proposed constitutional amendment to allow a private company to own and operate seven casinos in Arkansas. The leading supporter of that proposal, Michael Wasserman of Gainsville, Texas, has said he will ask the state Supreme Court to review the decision.
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 07/24/2012