Foster-family proposal short on names, gets 30 more days
Posted on Thursday, July 24, 2008
The Family Council Action Committee didn’t gather enough signatures to qualify for the ballot its proposal to ban adoption and foster parenting by unmarried couples.
Secretary of State Charlie Daniels rejected the proposed initiated act Wednesday for lack of signatures, but state law allows the committee 30 days to try to make up the shortfall.
Jerry Cox, the president of the committee, said he’s “very confident” the proposal will have sufficient signatures when the final deadline arrives.
The committee’s proposed initiated act would ban unmarried, cohabiting couples from adopting or fostering children. To get the proposal on the ballot for voters to decide, Daniels’ office must certify that 61, 974 of the petition signatures are those of registered voters.
Daniels spokesman Natasha Naragon said the committee submitted 65, 952 signatures. Of those, 2, 533 were “culled” because of problems such as errors involving the notaries who signed the petition pages.
Of those remaining, 57, 888 signatures were verified as those of registered voters, leaving the committee 4, 086 signatures short. Cox said he was very pleased with that number and the high percentage of approved signatures: about 91 percent of signatures checked were those of Arkansas registered voters. He said the committee got a head start and have already gathered about 2, 000 more signatures.
The suspense over signatures “really works in our favor,” he said, because it keeps volunteers out talking to people in their churches and elsewhere.
The spokesman for Arkansas Families First, the organization working to defeat the proposed initiated act, said the group will keep encouraging people not to sign the petition.
“We’re going to continue to educate Arkansans on what the real effect of the ballot initiative is, that it hurts children,” said Debbie Willhite, the spokesman.
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