Arkansas group seeks to restrict petition information

A conservative group says it may ask Arkansas lawmakers to block the release of petition-signers' personal information after a group posted the list of voters who signed petitions to put adoption and foster parenting restrictions on last year's ballot.
KnowThyNeighbor.org on Tuesday posted a list of the voters who signed petitions to put an initiated act banning unmarried couples from fostering or adopting children on the ballot. Voters approved the act, which took effect Jan. 1.
The Arkansas Family Council, which pushed for the act, complained that placing that list online violated the privacy of voters who signed petitions. The council says it will ask Attorney General Dustin McDaniel for an advisory opinion on whether the information can be released.
"If Arkansas doesn't have a law prohibiting the release of petition-signers' personal inofmration, we will ask the Arkansas Legislature to pass such a law next session," said Jerry Cox, the council's director. "This would provide equal protection to any voters who sign a ballot-measure petition, regardless of cause."
Cox said he didn't know if the group would seek to bar the release of any information on petition-signers or push for restrictions on what information is released. Cox said the council is in the process of seeking lawmakers to formally request the legal opinion.
McDaniel declined to comment on the Family Council's potential legal opinion request, but said that he generally opposes any effort to exempt items from the Freedom of Information Act unless there's a sound legal reason for it.
"I would be curious as to why they'd want to hide that information," McDaniel said.
Tom Lang, KnowThyNeighbor.org's director, said the Massachusetts-based group got the public records through the Arkansas secretary of state's office. Lang said restricting the information about the petition-signers would be a violation of free speech.
"If anything, that is completely anti-American and I can't imagine the Family Council would be able to muster any legislators to do anything as anti-American or anti-Democratic as that," Lang said.
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On the Net:
List of petition-signers: http://knowthyneighbor.org/arkansas/