Supporters of a recreational marijuana initiative have turned in the required number of valid signatures, moving the proposed constitutional amendment closer to appearing on Arkansas' ballot this fall, election officials said Friday.
Kevin Niehaus, spokesman for the Arkansas' secretary of state's office, said that after signature counters reached 90,000 verified signatures on Thursday night, they let Responsible Growth Arkansas know that they had been approved.
“Because of the time frame to get this done they stopped at 90,000 verified signatures and now have moved on to the casino petition,” he said. “Knowing how many signatures they still had left, and with it already reaching 90,000 signatures, they felt comfortable saying they made it.”
Niehaus said the group expects to finish verifying the rest of the signatures in the next week or so.
Petitioners for Responsible Growth Arkansas said in July that they had turned in 192,828 signatures, more than twice the number required in its bid to qualify the measure for the Nov. 8 general election ballot.
For a proposed constitutional amendment to be placed on the November ballot, a group must gather at least 89,151 valid signatures of registered voters, or 10% of the votes cast for governor in the most recent general election — in this case, 2018.
The proposal’s popular name and ballot title still must be approved by the state Board of Election Commissioners to qualify for the ballot.
Neihaus said they use computer software that goes page by page to verify the amount of signatures.
“It verifies if they are a registered voter and makes sure they didn’t accidentally sign a petition two or three times,” he said.
This story has been updated. It was originally published at 12:45 p.m.