Arkansas cannabis ballot measure fails to qualify for November

A proposed ballot measure in Arkansas to broaden the existing medical marijuana industry has fallen short of the number of signatures needed to make this year’s ballot, the secretary of state ruled, meaning voters won’t get to weigh in on the proposal.

Secretary of State John Thurston announced Monday that Arkansans for Patient Access – the campaign that gathered the signatures – submitted 88,040 valid voter signatures, just shy of the required threshold of 90,704, KUAR reported.

The campaign initially said it had submitted more than 114,000 signatures in July, before being given a 30-day “cure” period to add even more. That brought the total to more than 150,000 signatures, 4029 News reported.

The failed ballot measure would have made it easier for patients to qualify to purchase medical marijuana by expanding the list of eligible medical ailments, legalized home cultivation, and increased the number of health care providers allowed to write patient recommendations.

An effort to legalize recreational cannabis in the state failed in 2022.

Arkansans for Patient Access promised to take the secretary of state to court over the decision, KUAR reported, after several signatures were disqualified in a move that the campaign deemed “arbitrary”: A representative of the company that hired paid canvassers to collect the signatures signed off on their training rather than a sponsor of the amendment.

“Excluding 20,000 valid signatures collected during the cure period – due to an arbitrary, last-minute clerical rule change – is unfair and contrary to the democratic process,” the campaign said in a statement to KUAR.

As it stands, recreational cannabis legalization ballot questions will appear before voters in Florida, North Dakota and South Dakota. Nebraska voters will also get to decide whether to legalize medical marijuana.