CAPES falls short on required petition signatures against LEARNS Act

TEXARKANA, Ark. (KSLA) - Although Citizens For Arkansas Public Education and Students (CAPES) gathered thousands of signatures on a petition that opposed the LEARNS Act in Arkansas, the Secretary of State’s Office said the organization fell short of the minimum required signatures.

Steve Grappe, Executive Director of CAPES, thanked the Secretary of State’s Office but expressed the group’s disappointment.

“We certainly appreciate the efforts and impartiality of the Secretary of State’s office to expedite this process as quickly and as accurately as possible. We are very disappointed they did not show we met the minimum totals. We are confident that if we had the time the Constitution allows, we would have far exceeded the minimum.”

CAPES claims they were only able to reach 98.2% of the 54,422 minimum requirement because of roadblocks put in place by Attorney General Tim Griffin in an attempt to circumvent the people’s right to direct democracy.

The group continued on to say:

With HB1320 (Act 194) the General Assembly removed the ballot title approval from the election commission and gave it to the Attorney General. The Attorney General did not provide assistance to CAPES until the second rejection of their title, causing a delay of 33 days. This left volunteers only 57 days to obtain 54,422 signatures over a large geographic area of 50 counties. The General Assembly also passed HB1419 (Act 236) which changed the number of counties from 15 to 50, in direct violation of the Constitution and in order to thwart any efforts of the citizenry to redress a law the General Assembly passed, which is also guaranteed by the Constitution.

“We had hundreds of volunteers all across the state who worked tirelessly for weeks to exercise their constitutional rights as citizens. We know that almost 55,000 Arkansans expressed their desire to place this legislation on the ballot in a short amount of time,” Grappe said. “This indicates a strong desire across the state to do the same. We are going to continue to fight to ensure the democratic rights of our citizens are recognized and protected. We are going to continue to fight for our public education system in Arkansas.”

To conclude the statement from CAPES, they said they will continue to pursue this issue:

The Executive Branch, under the leadership of Governor Sanders, used the Legislative Branch and the Attorney General’s office to actively bypass the Constitutional rights of the Citizens of the State of Arkansas to actively participate in direct democracy. CAPES will pursue this issue to the fullest extent as allowed by law.

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