Committee passes bill to give attorney general more power to block citizen-led ballot measures

A House committee gave its stamp of approval Wednesday to a bill that would enhance the Arkansas attorney general’s authority to reject ballot measures proposed by citizens, the latest effort by Republicans in the state Legislature to make Arkansas’s direct democracy process harder to access.

House Bill 1222 is sponsored by Rep. David Ray (R-Maumelle), who has tried before to water down citizens’ ability to change state law at the ballot box. Ray was the legislator behind the proposed constitutional amendment in 2022 that would have required a 60% supermajority vote to pass future ballot measures (as notoriously is the case in Florida). Voters rejected Ray’s proposal that year by a 19-point margin.

Ray’s modern bill isn’t quite as ambitious, but it’s still bad news for direct democracy. 

Under current law, the state attorney general has the ability to reject a proposed ballot measure only if its title would be misleading to voters. Ray’s bill would allow the AG to also reject a ballot measure if it “conflicts with the United States Constitution or a federal statute.” And it would prohibit a group from submitting multiple proposals to the attorney general’s office that “cover the same subject matter” and have “the same general purpose.”

Ray said his bill was necessary because of groups trying to “subvert” the state’s process. “I don’t believe our ballot title process as it currently exists is strong enough to protect the voter,” he said.

Rep. Andrew Collins (D-Little Rock) said Ray’s bill created a separation of powers problem by assigning the attorney general the powers of the judiciary. “You’re effectively making the attorney general into a court interpreting constitutional law,” Collins said. “That’s not the proper role for the attorney general.” 

Ray said the attorney general already writes opinions about the legality of bills and other issues. “We routinely ask the attorney general to weigh in on matters of constitutionality,” he said.

But Collins pointed out that those AG opinions are explicitly advisory. “I think the big difference here is that, in all of those other situations you’re talking about, it’s non-binding,” he said. In contrast, if the attorney general rejected a proposed ballot title because it allegedly violated federal law, that decision would “actually [have] the force of law behind it,” Collins said.

Rep. Jimmy Gazaway (R-Paragould), the committee’s chairman, told Ray he’d been asked how the bill might affect future ballot measures on marijuana, considering marijuana remains illegal under federal law. 

Ray appeared to say future cannabis-related proposals could indeed be blocked. “If there’s a federal statute that conflicts with anything … [it] could impact that ballot title,” he said. Ray said the bill would have no effect on the existing constitutional amendment that legalized medical marijuana in Arkansas, which voters passed in 2016. (An effort to expand the medical marijuana program appeared on the 2024 ballot, but the state Supreme Court struck down the proposal at the last minute and votes were not counted.)

Rep. Nicole Clowney (D-Fayetteville) raised concerns about the second part of the bill, regarding the ban on proposals that cover the same subject matter. It “feels entirely too broad … like we are opening the field for things to be rejected,” she said.

Ray said that change was necessary because some groups were “getting increasingly aggressive and finding ways to circumvent the rules.” Groups in the last election cycle were unhappy the attorney general had rejected their initial proposals and responded by “trying to … flood the zone with all these proposals to get them approved faster,” he said.

Ray appeared to be referencing efforts by a bipartisan pro-transparency group to get a proposed constitutional amendment and a proposed initiated act on the 2024 ballot. The measures aimed to protect the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, from being weakened by the Legislature in the future. 

In tardy 2023 and early 2024, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, a Republican, repeatedly rejected the transparency group’s submissions, saying they were misleading or confusing. After multiple rounds of rejections, and with the clock ticking to begin collecting signatures, the FOIA then gave Griffin four separate pairs of proposals in January 2025 for him to choose from. The attorney general then gave the group the go-ahead. (The petition ultimately failed to get enough signatures to make the fall ballot by a July 5 deadline.)

Despite the objections of the committee’s Democrats, and several members of the public who spoke against Ray’s bill, it passed on a voice vote. It next heads to the full House.