Matthew Moore: A group of civic engagement advocates is making their way across Arkansas this winter. Their goal is to raise awareness of two measures they are hoping to land on the ballots of Arkansans this election cycle.
One potential amendment is the Educational Rights Amendment of 2026. The other is the Arkansas Ballot Measure Rights Amendment. Members of the Citizens First Congress, the Arkansas Public Policy Panel and more will be hosting a ballot measures town hall at the Fayetteville Public Library on Tuesday, Feb. 3, at 6:30 p.m.
Bobby Howard will be on that panel. He’s the executive director at Arkansas Appleseed Legal Justice Center. He says it’s important to bring these issues directly to the people in a public space.
Bobby Howard: You know, one of the things that motivates this constitutional amendment in the first place, the Arkansas Ballot Measure Rights Amendment, is that, you know, the motto of our state is that the people rule, and we take that really seriously. That’s what the framers of our state constitution took really seriously, and that needs to be protected.
And it’s a tough sell to have something called the Arkansas Ballot Measure Rights Amendment and to talk about the people’s voice and to talk about the people’s power without ever talking to the people, right? And so what we’re trying to do is go directly to these communities where we know there are a bunch of Arkansans that are smart. They’re thinking. They’re asking questions. Take the issues directly to them. Do some educating, but also make space to be educated and hear from these people directly from them about what’s most important to them, what they’re most worried about.
Moore: What have you heard so far from folks leading up to this conversation that will inform what you talk about and what kind of gets brought up for folks to listen about?
Howard: People are really frustrated. People are frustrated that they’re saying X and their policymakers are doing Y, right? People are frustrated that there’s the expectation in place that policymakers in Arkansas work for the people and not the other way around. And if that holds true, people are wondering, you know, why are they working so hard to undermine these direct democracy rights?
Direct democracy in Arkansas has a really important history. We’re one of just a handful of states that still has a really strong and robust direct democracy process, and we’ve used it to do really cool things in the state of Arkansas. We’ve used it to raise the minimum wage. We’ve used it to implement medical marijuana sales. We’ve used it to implement ethics reforms and sunshine laws. We couldn’t get that stuff done through the state legislature, so the people had to do it directly themselves.
So the people really value that process, and they’re confused and frustrated and disappointed that certain state policymakers don’t. And so we’re hearing a lot about that. We’re also hearing just a lot of confusion. This stuff is complicated, right? Ballot Measure Rights Amendment, that’s a lot of syllables. And people just want to know what’s going on. What is this? It’s a civics lesson. Every good campaign is a civics lesson. So we’re trying to travel the state and explain to people how this process works, and how many signatures we need to collect from how many different counties, and the accompanying litigation that’s happening or that’s happened over the last quarter of the year or so.
Moore: Let's just keep it in the last three or four years, how has the political landscape changed in such a way that we need an amendment like this?
Howard: So in the 2025 legislative session, 13 different pieces of legislation passed through the legislature and made it to the governor’s desk that restrict or weaken Arkansans’ direct democracy rights. That was just in 2025. And in previous years, similar tranches of legislation went through, policies just designed to make signature collecting more burdensome. It’s already time-consuming. It’s already expensive. It’s already done in an extremely ethical way. Organizations like ours are extremely careful to make sure we’re compliant with state law as we’re collecting signatures.
So every little layer that you add on to make it just a little bit harder, to make it take just five minutes longer to collect one signature, you’re just making it harder for the people of Arkansas to get their issues on the ballot for a direct vote. And so as those things get added on top of the pile over the last several years, kind of one law after another, it’s really just made it cost prohibitive, man-hour prohibitive to get these things on the ballot. I don’t want to say impossible because what we’re trying to do this year is not the impossible thing. We’re trying to get a thing on the ballot for a vote, right?
But if you don’t have three, four million dollars to spend on a statewide signature collection program, it’s really hard to collect 93,000 signatures, right? So we’re trying to implement a change to the state constitution that ensures that ordinary people and grassroots organizations like ours can still exercise their direct democracy rights.
Moore: Do you find yourself having conversations with folks who agree with you but are tired?
Howard: Yeah. For sure. The field in 2024, there were a lot of really high-profile ballot measure campaigns and ballot question committees out in the field, and a lot of them came up just short or were disqualified on a technicality. Some rule that was broken, right. And there was no cure provided for the correction of the rule. So the signatures were just thrown, right?
So people gave everything they had to work on public education policy or women’s health issues. They gave their energy on these issues that they’re deeply passionate about. And then they feel like the rug was pulled out from under them. So, yeah, people are exhausted. And we’re seeing a lot of that. I mean, we have amazing volunteers. We’ve had signature collection events over the last two weeks in 15 different counties, right? So people are tired, yeah, but people are more frustrated than they are tired. People are energized. People are mad because that’s not the way this is supposed to work. Our policymakers shouldn’t be making it harder for the people of Arkansas to practice their constitutional rights, their direct democracy rights. They should be bending over backwards to make it easier for the people of Arkansas to exercise the stuff that the state constitution says they have a right to exercise.
People are so frustrated with all of these burdens that are being added onto the pile, with all of the hurdles that are being thrown up in front of the volunteers, in front of the organizations like ours that don't have a lot of money and can't pay out of state firms five million dollars to come collect signatures. It’s infuriating to people. So as tired as they are, they’re energized, right? So it’s a little bit of both. And every single time they throw on a new requirement, it gets more people off the sidelines. People start wondering, why are they doing this? Why are some policymakers taking on the attitude that the people of Arkansas need to be protected from themselves? It's infuriating to people. So we're seeing a lot of energy in addition to seeing people that are worn out.
Moore: Are you seeing folks that maybe you haven’t seen in a while? People who are finding that there was a straw that broke the camel's back, that people are showing up, perhaps for the first time in years, or maybe even a decade to say I fought this fight before, and clearly I need to come out and fight it again.
Howard: Yeah, these coalitions are a lot of fun, especially in the direct democracy space. There's so much fun because you get people involved that have been doing this for thirty years, right? I'll call them the old timers and they won't appreciate that, but you got the people that have been just doing this for about as long as I've been alive. And they’re so much fun to work with because the technologies change, the processes change, they have an encyclopedic knowledge of all of the hurdles that have been thrown up over the years. So you got those people. You got the people that just moved here and think direct democracy is really cool, and they want to protect and defend it. You got the people that have just never paid attention and a new thing happens and they start paying attention and they're involved for the very first time. You got the people that were registering to vote while we're out collecting signatures. They're getting involved for the very first time.
You got the people turning 18 that want to learn what the civic process looks like. So we're onboarding them, and they're getting involved for the very first time. So yeah, it's a lot of fun. It's a good mix of folks that have been doing it for a long time out in the field and folks where this direct democracy stuff, of course, regardless of political party, this is a wildly popular set of policy ideas to protect and strengthen direct democracy. It's pulling people in from all over the political spectrum, and it's creating a space where all of those people can work together in a really productive way. It's a lot of fun.
Moore: And you're dealing with a lot of intergenerational knowledge, where knowledge is going both directions, right? You've got newer folks who are teaching the older folks how to use the technology to better implement what you're trying to do. You've got folks with years of experience and anecdotal evidence to say, here's what's happened before, I know you're going to run into a roadblock with this, because you'll always run into a roadblock with this. There's a lot of this intergenerational learning that's happening, it sounds like.
Howard: That's right. The different strengths that come to the table, not just across the ideological spectrum, the political spectrum, but the generational spectrum. It's just a lot of fun, right? I don't know anybody in “fill in the blank” Arkansas, but one of my partners who's been doing this for thirty years has ten cousins over there and taught in that elementary school thirty years ago. Right. I mean, it's just it's a lot of fun to share those resources and to work together at that level.
Bobby Howard is the executive director at Arkansas Appleseed Legal Justice Center. We spoke over Zoom earlier this week. You can find more details about the ballot measures town hall here.
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