Randolph County voters will not decide this November if alcohol will be sold in the county

Judge Phil Smith ruled Tuesday (Aug. 30) that Arkansas’ local option laws pertaining to the collection of petition signatures for alcohol sales are constitutional, and Randolph County residents will not decide if spirits, beer, and wine will be sold there.

Keep Revenue in Randolph County, an organization formed to get the issue onto the November ballot, filed a lawsuit earlier this month against Randolph County Clerk Rhonda Blevins after she deemed that only 3,452 of the signatures were valid, leaving the effort 361 signatures short. The group submitted more than 6,000. The organization is spearheaded by retired attorney Linda Bowlin. She told Talk Business & Politics she’s not sure if they will appeal this decision.

“We’re looking at all of our options … One day we hope that citizens in Randolph County will get to vote on this issue, one that would allow the sale of legal products in our county,” she said.

State law allows county clerks to dismiss an entire petition sheet if one of the signatures collected comes from a person who doesn’t live in the county. Blevins dismissed about 800 signatures under this provision. Many other signatures were struck for various reasons including duplicate signatures, some were not registered to vote, and hundreds of the signatures were collected by canvassers not registered with the clerk.

At least 38% of registered voters in a county must sign a petition to allow for an alcohol sales vote, according to state law. Keep Revenue in Randolph County had five signatures per sheet. If one of those signatures came from someone that didn’t live in the county, the other four were tossed, too.

Bowlin and her group argued this practice is unconstitutional. Smith ruled otherwise. The judge argued that laws like this help prevent voter fraud. Petitioners in this case could have blacked out the names of the signers who lived outside the county, before it was submitted to the clerk. This simple act would saved the other four signatures on each of these petitions.

“It is imminently reasonable for the legislature to require clerks to reject petition parts containing out-of-county signatures,” Smith wrote. “The petition sponsor has the ability to prevent such a consequence by conducting its own review and striking such prior to submitting the petition to the clerk.”

At least 322 other signatures were also dismissed by Smith because of canvasser errors. Those included a canvasser not registering with the clerk, notarization problems, and other errors.

Proponents of legalization efforts touted the county’s lost revenues as a motivation to drive alcohol sales in the county. A University of Arkansas study indicated that the county would have about $3.3 million in retail alcohol sales each year, and the county and the city of Pocahontas would collect about $107,000 a year in sales tax, combined. It would create at least 19 jobs, and have another $1.3 million in other economic impacts.

Bowlin said her organization may have lost the battle in court, but the issue is far from resolved. If the group decides to not pursue legal remedies, it will seek to get the issue on the ballot in 2018. One change they will make is to require one signature per petition page.

“We will pursue this again … we just need to formulate a different game plan,” she said.