Adoption petition adds 30,000 names

The group promoting a proposed ballot measure to bar unmarried cohabiting couples from adopting or fostering children turned in more than 30, 000 additional signatures to the secretary of state’s office Thursday in its quest to qualify the proposal for the Nov. 4 ballot.

“I am pleased to report that we have gathered more than enough signatures to place the Arkansas Adoption and Foster Care Act on the ballot,” Jerry Cox, president of the Family Council Action Committee, told reporters in the state Capitol.

Last month, the secretary of state’s office said it verified 57, 888 signatures of Arkansas registered voters from the committee’s initial submission of more than 65, 000 signatures. That left the committee short of the 61, 974 required to place its proposed initiated act on the ballot, but state law gave the committee an additional 30 days to make up the shortfall.

Cox said the group’s submission of 31, 012 more signatures Thursday increased its total number to 96, 911.

“Based on the percentage of good signatures that we had in the first filing, we should have probably around 20, 000 signatures more than we actually need to get this on the ballot,” he said.

But Debbie Willhite of Little Rock, lead consultant for the Arkansas Families First committee opposing the proposed act, said that among the signatures verified by the secretary of state her group has found duplicate signatures, forgeries, and days on which one canvasser collected nearly 200 signatures.

“We’ll be having investigators talk to these people to make sure that the canvasser witnessed every signature and that clipboard wasn’t just left in the back of the church,” she said.

Another foe of the proposal, Aimee Berry of Little Rock, executive director of the state chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said, “We want to make sure that every ‘i’ is dotted and ‘t’ is crossed because this would be such a bad thing for children that we just can’t leave any stone unturned.” Cox said he’s “very confident” of the signatures already verified because the secretary of state’s office did “an excellent job” and the office and the committee reviewed the signatures.

“I don’t think [foes ] are going to get much traction in the area of a signature challenge,” he said. Natasha Naragon, a spokesman for Secretary of State Charlie Daniels, said Daniels’ office contracts with the JPMS Cox PLLC certified public accounting firm in Little Rock to manage the signature verification. At the start of the verification, signatures are culled that are determined to be illegible, improperly notarized, incomplete, etc., she said. Once verifiable signatures are determined, JPMS Cox officials use about 30 to 40 temporary workers from Spherion Staffing in Little Rock to check each name against the statewide voter registration database to ensure each signer is a valid registered voter in the state, Naragon said. JPMS Cox officials supervise and check the work of these temporary workers, she said.

Willhite said Tuesday that Arkansas Families First plans to file a lawsuit aimed at removing the proposal from the ballot if Daniels certifies it for the ballot.

Among other things, the suit would argue the proposal’s ballot title is misleading, the proposal is unconstitutional, and its petition lacks the required number of registered voter signatures, Willhite said.

Cox said the committee has expected a court challenge for more than a year. The committee consulted with lawyers in Arkansas and across the nation to craft “a proposal that is solidly written, constitutionally sound and one that voters can understand,” he said.

“While we don’t welcome a lawsuit, at the same time we have a very good proposal that will stand up to legal scrutiny, and we’ll just have to clear that hurdle if it comes,” he said.

The act would prohibit a child from being adopted or placed in a foster home in which a would-be parent is “cohabiting with a sexual partner outside of a marriage which is valid under the constitution and laws of this state.” Arkansas’ constitution says a marriage is only between a man and a woman.

The Arkansas Department of Human Services already has a policy that excludes cohabiting couples from serving as foster parents. There is no similar restriction on adoptions.

Berry said the state should be expanding the pool of prospective parents rather than shrinking it.

“We need to be looking at ways to increase the number of foster homes and adoptive homes and not discriminate on sexual orientation or marital status,” she said.

Cox said in a written statement that the proposal applies equally to homosexuals and heterosexuals and won’t decrease the number of foster homes. The proposal provides “extra protection” to adoptive children by applying the state’s policy for foster children to adoptions as well, he said.

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