The peevish dweebs in the Arkansas Legislature love to keep all the power in their own grubby, micromanaging little hands. So it’s no surprise that they absolutely hate the recent trend of ballot initiatives pushing for change via direct democracy.
In a substance-free bit of grandstanding during the special session today, a gaggle of attention-thirsty Republicans brought forward a pair of House resolutions attempting to publicly trash two potential proposals before they’ve even reached the ballot. It was a haughty bit of elitist scolding so ham-fisted that I wonder whether it will actually galvanize voters in favor of the ballot measures. The resolutions passed out of committee this afternoon and are now on to the House floor.
Direct democracy is especially a bummer for right-wingers frustrated when red-state citizens don’t vote the way elite politicians want them to. Here in Arkansas, voters have backed minimum wage hikes and medical marijuana legalization, despite opposition from key Republican leaders. In other states, measures to expand Medicaid and protect abortion rights have proven that when given the chance to vote on specific policies, red state voters might not be the doctrinaire ideologues that lawmakers imagine them to be.
This year, a number of ballot initiatives are making the rounds, with canvassers collecting signatures across the state. Two efforts in particular have drawn the ire of Republicans: a measure that would guarantee new protections for abortion rights and one focused on education that would hold private schools receiving vouchers to the same standards as public schools, as well as mandating new spending priorities for education in the state.
Big-money opponents have followed the normal playbook, trying to flood the zone with negative ads aiming to convince citizens not to sign the ballot petitions. Legal challenges on tedious technical issues are sure to follow to try to keep the measures off the ballot even if they do apparently collect the requisite number of signatures. Things have taken a nastier turn, as well, with the anti-abortion Family Council publishing the names and hometowns of people collecting signatures, in an apparent intimidation effort.
But Republicans in the Legislature weren’t satisfied with these efforts to quash the measures. And hey, it’s a special session, with everyone gathered in Little Rock to gorge on per diems on the taxpayer dime. Might as well do a little grandstanding, with GOP blowhards hungrily seeking out the microphone like a badling of baby ducks desperately quacking for a morsel from their mother.
Normally House resolutions are for feel-good pomp-and-circumstance stuff, like honoring a local high school band or something. But these two resolutions say that the ballot measures are bad and Arkansans shouldn’t vote for them. I’m not aware of any citizen asking for the advice of politicians, but that was no obstacle.
Rep. Ryan Rose (R-Van Buren) presented the resolution against the abortion rights ballot initiative: “To oppose the Arkansas Abortion Amendment of 2024 and encourage all registered voters to vote against the Arkansas abortion amendment of 2024.”
“Arkansas has been the #1 pro-life state in the country,” Rose said, perhaps dreaming that he might present a commemorative ribbon as one might normally expect alongside a House resolution.
He drearily listed the standard talking points against abortion. Why? Everyone has heard these arguments before. If you believe that Arkansas’s current law which just about bans abortion altogether is the right thing to do, you are not going to like a proposed constitutional amendment to reverse that ban. If passed, the amendment would not allow the state to “prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion services within 18 weeks of fertilization.” Those protections would also be extended beyond 18 weeks in cases of rape, incest, fatal fetal anomalies or “to protect a pregnant female’s life or to protect a pregnant female from a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury.”
This is pretty cut and dried, but Rose apparently doesn’t trust voters to figure it out for themselves. Rose droned on and on about how super pro-life Arkansas is and was and forever will be — which makes you wonder why he’s worried about the proposed amendment. If he’s so confident that “it goes against the values the majority of Arkansans hold dear,” why not just let the voters decide?
Rep. Brit McKenzie (R-Rogers) presented the resolution against the Arkansas Educational Rights Amendment. Like the anti-abortion resolution, it proclaims opposition to the education ballot initiative and encourages Arkansans to vote against it. In a hilariously petty fit of pique, the bill’s drafters also called it “the misleadingly titled” amendment (of course, Attorney General Tim Griffin approved the bill’s title and language, insisting over the course of multiple drafts that it clearly lay out all provisions). For more background on the amendment and what it does, see here.
Republican lawmakers are genuinely freaked out by this amendment because it would force the Legislature to spend on priorities like pre-K or after-school programming. These services are very popular with the public, but Arkansas legislators don’t like them. They want a more cutting-edge approach by which they send gobs of cash to private school families as part of a voucher scheme likely to make educational outcomes drastically worse. If it makes the ballot, there’s a good chance it will pass, which is why Jim Walton has poured half a million dollars into a campaign to try to stop it.
McKenzie said that he wanted to clarify that he had no problem with citizens pursuing a ballot initiative, but he did have a problem with this one, because he doesn’t like it. So there you go. He claimed it would create a “basket weave of new issues.” No idea what that means. He also said it would cost a significant amount of money, which is true, though proponents would argue that the benefits of better educational services will bring a positive return on investment in the long run.
McKenzie acknowledged that the state’s education overhaul passed by the Legislature last year, Arkansas LEARNS, was and is highly controversial. Be that as it may, “we are in a post-LEARNS world,” he said. LEARNS, remember, keeps private schools from having to follow the same standards as public schools, which this amendment would require.
This is a wild misunderstanding of how democracy works. LEARNS is indeed the law in Arkansas, but it’s not an immutable oath of the land. THE LEARNS EPOCH BY DECREE OF THE EMPORER HAS BEGUN! No. It’s a law that was passed last year that can be changed. McKenzie might not like that, because he really loves LEARNS. But if this measure gets on the ballot, it’s not up to him. It’s up to the people of Arkansas. And he really, really doesn’t like that.
Both resolutions are off for more speechifying tomorrow on the House floor, where they will surely pass. Substantively, this is utterly meaningless. It has precisely the same force of law as if a rogue legislator wrote out a proclamation on the wall of the Capitol with the dusty remnants of a fossilized turd.
But what about strategically? I guess legislators think that people at home are just waiting to be told how to vote by their betters. My guess is that lawmakers are mistaken here. If anything, these attacks by legislators are likely to backfire, giving more attention to these two initiatives just as they’re down to the wire collecting the signatures they need to qualify for the ballot. I’ll do a roundup on this later this week, but multiple speakers got lots of airtime to explain why the ballot initiatives are important steps forward for the state.
In my experience, few state lawmakers are strategic thinkers, so I kind of doubt it occurred to them that they were just giving free publicity to the advocates pushing these ballot initiatives. All for a purely ceremonial scolding session from the Capitol. I’m sure Brit McKenzie is a nice guy, but I doubt many people care about his canned talking points. They will just vote for the stuff they support and vote down the stuff they don’t.
It’s a great system, unless you’re Arkansas GOP legislators jealous of anyone sharing their precious power.