Court won’t rehear Arkansas’ bid for restrictive voter registration rule

In a win for voters, a federal appeals court denied a rehearing for Arkansas election officials who lost their case in March to implement a “wet signature” mandate, which would have made voter registration more difficult. 

The case stems from a digital application created in 2024 by an organization called Get Loud Arkansas (GLA), which enabled voters to register online using an electronic signature. Despite Secretary of State John Thurston (R) confirming several times that year that the online registration app was legally valid, he ultimately reversed course and told county clerks to reject any registrations that didn’t have “wet” handwritten signatures on them. 

GLA sued Thurston and a group of Arkansas and county election officials in 2024 claiming that the “wet signature” mandate violated voters’ civil rights protections against being denied voting access due to trivial details or mistakes. A district court blocked the mandate from taking hold, which the 8th U.S. The Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed in March this year.  

The order granted today rejected the state’s request for a full rehearing of the case, meaning Arkansas voters won’t be blocked from registering electronically.

Thurston and state officials claimed that handwritten signatures were needed to prevent voter fraud, despite providing no evidence that massive fraud was ever discovered.

“The [state] cites no evidence to support its claim that a requirement of wet signatures on registration applications is material to preventing voter fraud in Arkansas,” Chief Judge Steven Colloton wrote for the court in the March ruling.