After rejecting two previous proposals, Arkansas Attorney Tim Griffin signed off Monday on a ballot measure that aims to roll back Arkansas LEARNS, the massive K-12 education package passed by the legislature this spring. Critics say the law, championed by Governor Sarah Sanders, will usher in the privatization of the state’s public school system.

CAPES, the public education advocacy group behind the proposed referendum, now hopes to collect enough signatures this summer to get the measure placed before Arkansas voters in 2024, but the path ahead will be difficult.

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Griffin’s opinion says the ballot measure is no longer “misleading,” as were the previous two attempts. But that is because it “essentially cuts and pastes from nearly every section of the LEARNS Act,” the attorney general said.

The result is a ballot title that is over 8,000 words long. The Arkansas Supreme Court has often derailed proposed ballot measures for reasons including length and complexity, and Griffin’s opinion cites several examples, adding:

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In contrast to these ballot titles ranging from 550 words to 727 words that the Court considered to be too complex and lengthy, your ballot title—at 8,154 words and 16 pages—is the longest in Arkansas history. If the Court considered a 587-word title too complex and lengthy that a voter likely would not be able to grasp it within the time allowed to vote, then that is almost certainly the case for one that is nearly 14 times longer.

The attorney general acknowledged, however, that the cases referenced “generally consider initiated measures — ones over which the sponsor can control the length and complexity of the underlying measure on which the people are being asked to vote.” In contrast to an initiated act or amendment (such as last year’s recreational marijuana proposal), the CAPES measure is a referendum — a chance for the voters to weigh in on a law already passed by the legislature. But Griffin expressed doubt that the Court would articulate a different set of rules for initiatives and referenda.

Considering LEARNS is a 145-page bill covering everything from teacher salaries to literacy instruction to a universal voucher program, it may have been all but impossible to summarize the legislation into a ballot title that was both concise and comprehensive. With its third try, CAPES went the completist route.

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CAPES chair Veronica McClain celebrated the news, saying the group was “excited to move forward with getting signatures” and “disappointed” by Griffin’s prediction that the Supreme Court would reject the measure. Sanders spokeswoman Alexa Henning decried the measure as the work of radical leftists “playing political games with our kids’ futures and sowing turmoil in schools.”

Meanwhile, LEARNS itself is currently on hold pending resolution of a lawsuit over the procedure by which the bill was voted on by lawmakers. The state Supreme Court has requested briefs on that case to be filed this week.

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