Page:Leigh v. Hall.pdf/12

A.] that the sponsors of the proposed initiated act, which has for its popular name, 'Arkansas Minimum Wage and Overtime Act', completed the filing of their petitions on the 7th day of July, 1960 when they filed petitions containing 1057 signatures proposing said measure. Dated this 20th day of September, 1960." So, after this lawsuit was filed in this Court, the sponsors went back to the Secretary of State and obtained a certificate that on July 7th 1057 additional signatures had been filed; and the sponsors say that this 1057 additional signatures filed on July 7th "completed the filing", and made the "substantial compliance" to be on that day. I cannot follow such reasoning: the Secretary of State had already issued a certificate on June 27th, as required by § 2-210 Ark. Stats., that the petition had been filed on June 27th. The filing on July 7th was entirely an afterthought, just as was the September 20th certificate from the Secretary of State, which was obtained by the sponsors after this lawsuit had been filed, and which was brought into the record by amendment to the sponsors' original answer. If the July 7th filing of 1057 additional signatures had been required by law, then the Secretary of State (under § 2-210, Ark. Stats.) was obligated to issue his certificate of that filing within fifteen days from July 7th; and the Secretary of State is too careful an official to have failed to comply with § 2-210, Ark. Stats. He would have issued a certificate within fifteen days of July 7th (rather than on September 20th) if anyone had thought that July 7th was the filing date. It is crystal clear that the July 7th filing has been seized on by the sponsors as a crutch to support a broken limb July 7th cannot have been a date of "substantial compliance" because the whole filing had been completed and certified on June 27th.

As to why Constitutional Amendment No. 7 required that the publication of the measure must be thirty days before the filing, I do not know. Some say that the purpose of the thirty-day publication requirement prior to filing was to inform the voter, rather than the signer, of the proposed measure. Such an argument is making a surmise to be stronger than plain words. I do know that