The group Keep Revenue in Randolph County has been working for months to collect almost 4,000 signatures from registered voters for a petition.
The petition was to give residents the opportunity to vote on making Randolph County a wet county on the November ballot. Earlier this month, just a couple of days before the petition was due, the County Clerk’s office rejected over 169 pages of signatures, causing the group to be 361 signatures short.
An entire page of signatures would get rejected because one signature did not meet the requirements in Arkansas law Act 1413 of 2013.
The group’s committee chair Linda Bowlin filed a lawsuit against County Clerk Rhonda Blevins, telling the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that she used an invalidated portion of the law to prevent the group from getting the measure on the ballot.
Blevins told the newspaper her office followed state law in validating the petitions.
