Randolph County residents in November will get their first chance in more than 70 years to vote on whether to legalize the sale of alcohol in the county.
County Clerk Rhonda Blevins said she certified 4,212 signatures on petitions submitted by Let Randolph County Vote to put before voters whether to allow alcohol sales and manufacture in the county.
Blevins said 3,861 signatures were required to put the issue on the Nov. 6 general election ballot.
"I think the time has come," Let Randolph County Vote Chairman Linda Bowlin said Wednesday. "Randolph County is definitely ready to vote on this thing. It was ready four years ago, it was ready two years ago, and it's true today."
The first try was in 2014 when canvassers gathered 1,700 signatures on petitions before dropping the effort and joining a statewide attempt to legalize alcohol sales. The statewide effort failed, although it passed in Randolph County, she said.
Bowlin chaired the Keep Revenue in Randolph County campaign in 2016, but petitions submitted to the clerk were ruled insufficient to get the issue on the ballot.
This year, Bowlin said, she and a small group of volunteers worked for six months to gather the necessary number of signatures.
"It was a grass-roots effort," she said.
Allowing alcohol sales in Randolph County will keep $3 million a year in the county that residents now spend buying liquor in neighboring counties, Bowlin said, quoting a recent study.
She also said she disagreed with opponents' claims that alcohol sales would lead to an increase in crime, requiring more police officers and sheriff's deputies to be hired, and would erode the quality of life in the county.
Opposing the liquor campaign in Randolph County is an organization called Citizens For a Safe Randolph County, chaired by James H. Anderson, according to its Arkansas Ethics Commission statement of organization.
Anderson, owner of Anderson Refrigeration in Pocahontas, said Wednesday that he was against the use of alcohol because so many homes are destroyed by it, people are killed on the highways because of it, and it leads to alcoholism and drug use.
"If they vote it in, I do not have to participate," he said.
Anderson said he was not against the people who were leading the effort to permit alcohol sales but that he is against alcohol itself.
"Citizens For a Safe Randolph will seek to educate the residents of Randolph County and to defeat the popular vote, if any, that would allow for the sale and manufacture of alcoholic beverages in Randolph County," the organization said in its statement of organization.
The statement didn't list any members of the organization. It listed donors in its financial reports as Bart's Package Store in Doniphan, Mo., Stateline Liquor in Neelyville, Mo., and Countryside Liquor in Deplaine in Greene County. The three businesses, all near the Randolph County line, gave Citizens For a Safe Randolph County a total of $4,500 in May.
Another donor, Greene County Beer Association of Paragould, gave the organization $7,000 in June, according to its financial reports.
More than $4,000 of the donations was used to buy direct mail materials, the financial reports said.
State Desk on 08/09/2018