Proposed maximum reading level for citizen-led ballot measures stumbles but passes Arkansas House

Yahoo

20-03-2025

Rep. Ryan Rose, R-Van Buren, presents House Bill 1713 to the House Committee on State Agencies and Governmental Affairs on Wednesday, March 12, 2025. (Tess Vrbin/Arkansas Advocate)
A proposal mandating citizen-led ballot measures be written at an 8th-grade or lower reading level cleared the Arkansas House of Representatives Wednesday after three attempts to pass its emergency clause.
House Bill 1713 passed the House on Tuesday with 60 votes; a separate vote on the emergency clause received 63 votes. Emergency clauses require a two-thirds vote in each chamber, meaning at least 67 House votes, and allow laws to go into effect immediately upon the governor's signature. HB 1713's emergency clause received 70 votes Wednesday and will next be heard in the Senate Committee on State Agencies and Governmental Affairs.
HB 1713 narrowly passed the equivalent House committee on March 12 after lawmakers and members of the public raised concerns that proposed ballot measures are too complex by default to be written at or below an 8th-grade reading level.
Bill sponsor Rep. Ryan Rose, R-Van Buren, said the bill should help Arkansans 'make informed decisions when asked to sign a petition, without confusion, without legalese, without any deceptive wording.'
Republican lawmakers this year have introduced a wide range of bills that would add regulations to Arkansas' direct democracy process. The 2024 election cycle saw a wide range of proposed citizen-led ballot measures, only one of which qualified for the November ballot, and supporters of the direct democracy regulations have made allegations of deceptive practices by supporters of last year's measures.
Many of the bills have had emergency clauses, and some have required multiple votes in either chamber before meeting the two-thirds threshold. Several of those bills have been signed into law, and most were sponsored by Sen. Kim Hammer, R-Benton.
Two bills to change citizen-led petition process pass Arkansas House, but without emergency clauses
Hammer will run next year for Secretary of State, the office that oversees elections. He is a co-sponsor of HB 1713.
Rep. Nicole Clowney, D-Fayetteville, voted against HB 1713 in committee and on the House floor. She said Wednesday that she supported 'a readability standard of some sort' for ballot measures but did not believe HB 1713 was the right mechanism for creating one.
The bill mandates the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level readability test as the determinant of compliance with the policy.
'It's just an algorithm that spits out a readability level based on sentence length and word length,' Clowney said. 'If a word has five syllables, a word like 'constitutional,' you are automatically penalized by the parameters of this test.'
Committee chairman Rep. Jimmy Gazaway, R-Paragould, said the bill does not acknowledge that 'it can be difficult to convey complex ideas or concepts with small words.' His vote to pass the bill out of the committee was the deciding vote, but he voted present on the bill and the emergency clause Tuesday. He voted for the emergency clause Wednesday.
HB 1713 would not apply the same readability standards to legislatively proposed constitutional amendments, which drew concerns from lawmakers and members of the public March 12. Voters approved an amendment last year that the Legislature placed on the ballot, allowing trade-school students to benefit from scholarship lottery funds.
Clowney pointed out Wednesday that this amendment had a college graduate-level reading level, according to the Flesch-Kincaid readability test.
Proposed amendments are required to begin with 'an amendment to the Arkansas Constitution.' House Minority Leader Andrew Collins, D-Little Rock, told the committee last week that this phrase is also deemed college-graduate level by the reading test.
So is the title of HB 1713 itself, said Gail Choate, a political scientist and civics educator who spoke against the bill March 12.
'What I'm concerned [about] with this bill is that it does nothing to address civic education,' Choate said. 'It does nothing to address the ability of people to understand even what a ballot initiative is or what it works… It dumbs down the process, it lowers the standard under which we're presenting information under the guise that people aren't able to understand.'
Jerry Cox, president of the conservative Family Council, spoke in favor of the bill before the committee, while attorney and direct democracy advocate J.P. Tribell spoke against it.
HB 1713 is likely to be considered by senators after the Legislature's spring break next week.