Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin rejected a proposed ballot initiative on education for the 2026 election on Thursday, saying that the filing was missing materials.
The amendment, brought by the ballot question committee For AR Kids, is aimed at raising standards and increasing services in K-12 schools in Arkansas that receive state funding.
“You have submitted two popular names and two ballot titles. But you have not submitted any text for your proposed amendment,” Griffin wrote in a letter on Thursday.
Griffin was referring to an additional version of the popular name and ballot title in Spanish translation that For AR Kids included in its submission.
Griffin said that the proposal cannot include both the English and Spanish versions of the name and title and also that the text of the amendment was missing.
“A failure to submit the proposed amendment’s full text … makes it impossible for me to determine whether your proposed popular name and ballot title are misleading,” Griffin wrote, saying that For AR Kids must resubmit its Aug. 16 application.
The Educational Rights Amendment of 2026, identical to the one from this year, would require private schools that accept vouchers to comply with state academic standards, guarantee universal pre-K, after school, summer and special education programs and services for children from low-income households and cement current minimum education standards into the state constitution.
In July, after its amendment failed to get enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, For AR Kids posted on X, formerly Twitter, “We collected just under 70,000 signatures and qualified 55 out of 50 counties.”
Citizen-initiated constitutional amendments needed 90,704 signatures, or 10% of the turnout from the last gubernatorial election, across 50 counties, to qualify.
“To be honest, this is really not a big deal, this was just a mistake on our staff’s part,” Bill Kopsky, For AR Kids’ treasurer said on Friday. “It’s a little irritating that, instead of just calling us and telling us it’s incomplete, they took two weeks to sit on it and then issue this ruling.”
“It’s fine, they’re within their rights to do that but it just, I think, goes to show how adversarial the process has become,” he said. “In days of old, the attorney general’s office just would have called and said there was an error and given us a chance to fix it.”
According to Kopsky, For AR Kids will refile their proposed amendment on Tuesday and he expects to hear back from the Attorney General’s Office within 10 days after that.
A representative from the Attorney General’s Office declined to comment on Friday.
This article originally appeared on Fort Smith Times Record: Arkansas attorney general rejects education amendment for 2026 ballot
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Publish date : 2024-09-02 23:01:00
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