Tags:
| Updated: 8/22/2012 5:53 pm |
Published: 8/22/2012 4:54 pm |
LITTLE ROCK, AR - Employees with Secretary of State Mark Martin’s office pour over more than 100,000 signatures submitted by Nancy Todd’s poker palace.
The ballot initiative calls for casinos in four Arkansas counties controlled solely by Nancy Todd.
With supporters this afternoon, she says the signatures submitted today are enough.
“We had the luxury of being able to go in and verify with the Secretary of State that they were in fact registered to vote,” Todd said. “We just had more time than we had the first short time.”
The first round didn’t go well. More than 70 percent of signatures were deemed invalid. A rate so high, legislators are now looking into possibilities of ballot signature fraud.
“Anyone who commits voter fraud ought to serve time in jail. And there’s only two (legislators) that I know of that have asked about this,” Todd said. “I’ve given them everything I have on that. Absolutely, it’s not right.”
Arkansans said yes to a lottery four years ago. Todd thinks that same momentum will carry into November for her casino proposal.
“It’s been interesting and challenging but every time the opposition would send out a mailer more people would want to sign and approach our people, which is really quite a statement when we haven’t even had a chance to run a campaign or tell our story we’ve just been in the signature gathering process,” Todd said.
The casino backers hope to tell that story this fall.
