may please the court my name is vincent wagner and the deputy solicitor general of arkansas here representing sir terry of state john thurston the us constitution does not guarantee to americans the right to enact legislation through direct democracy counsel before you go there could you tell us whether on july rd the proponents of the initiative submitted at least seventy five percent of the required signatures your honor i can't tell you that yet because  secretary of state's office has just begun to count the signatures the secretary of state's office has thirty days to verify those and have it and during that period the secretary's office will in term and weathered it and that seventy five percent threshold we don't know today we won't know for some time whether they get to seventy five percent signature threshold and when they have no counsel we won't know whether they're verifiable we would know whether they submitted at least on the face enough to keep it alive controversy around just under one hundred thousand signatures between nine hundred and ninety zero signatures so on the face they're not verified yet but on the face of the submissions they have at the seventy five percent threshold but as i said  speech is being burdened here and there's no speech this burden here the end person requirement does not permit human speech because plaintiffs even the individual plaintiffs are free to express themselves in any way in support of redistricting re express themselves in any way they wish the in person signature required it is relevant only as to the mechanics of the process for initiating legislation and the st amendment is not implicated by the mechanics of the process and other words the  st amendment does not dictate to arkansas the mechanics by which plaintiffs must be allowed to print or in legislative process which is what is an issue in here and what makes this case different than cases like buckley myron though we were looking at whether certain speech was to its protection because it was involved in the initiative process here the question is whether arkansas must to comply with the st amendment except certain speech as operative for the purposes of the ballot initiative process in the st amendment is not trigger solely because it might be soley because the is required might make their speech less likely to be here to distinguish between them enhanced in the speech because this is not primarily a process that's a forum for political expression but it's primarily a legislative procedure it's an exercise of arkansas legislative power that's at issue here conservative talks about the difference between requirements that necessarily limit the audience by burning expression in the necessarily makes speech less likely to succeed because they make the process more difficult and i think that that's what's at issue here is that it makes it more difficult for plaintiffs to initiate legislation but it doesn't make it more difficult for them to speak they are still free to speak in any way they choose they can sign a petition just the circulator must be present at a distance sign which brings me to another point that it doesn't burden the signer speech in any way because the signers doing what he would be doing otherwise no that's not what i'm saying that's not what the supreme court says but what i'm saying is that the circulator speech has been issued by the time the circulators witnessing the signing of the petition circulators not speaking through the petition must abide by the st amendment when it briefly speech incidental to the process but none of those cases consider the issue of whether the st amendment dictates to the states the mechanics of that process the supreme court has never sent has never a little poor with exactly what his reasoning is that mentions a lot of things in this one point it mentions trips to the state action problem for the plaintiffs in that case and we think this court review it that way or is a standing problem that they haven't shown any injury traceable a challenge but allowing this sort of emergency exemption to otherwise constitutional laws but inject a fair or poor person to managing states public health crisis response measures which is something this court said the federal courts should not be doing a looking question at a given point in time based on the circumstances that are static does the law of violate the constitution has applied to those circumstances but here the question is more fluid than that and the question changes on a da the judgment was entered and then we the same tomorrow month from now and state and local officials are better equipped than federal judges to respond to those sorts of fluid ongoing crisis and they're especially better those questions are about heart of what it means to be a sovereign state because the district court instead of following these principles remote arkansas selection procedures d in the middle of a pandemic and in the run up to an election this court reversed the different course person for instance for the last two weekends leading up to the deadline plaintiff's help posted consecutive sign drive events around the state where they host and drive through petitioning services and we saw in different states around arkansas come up after the judgment here are your read about kept council perhaps more pertinent doesn't arkansas have some disability accommodations specifically for petition measures i'm not sure which one you're referring to your honor could contribute more specific it's my understanding that arkansas has a statutory provisions specifically for initiative and referendum petitions that accommodate those with disabilities to all of these rights have been burdened by the global pandemic and i like to address the core issues that opposing counsel went through so i'll start with the application of the  because of her public health she would have to both interact with many of the sign and the witness and then she would also have to interact with the notary exposing more people  where intending to circulate but once they were aware of the covert prices many of them are of an older age and a creative race or have family members who are and so they didn't want to interact with either the sinuses or the notary it's just buckley when it was striking down their y m and that candace's with identifying badges would actually really give a communication the quotas because it will limit the number of voices to invade and then and that's what's happening here we have limited the number of voices that can convey the message to those volunteers and that mila initially engaged when able to go out because of the pandemic and and this gets into the question that was raised about official action  this is exactly what happened as a challenge is we don't need it to be the government of all in order to bring a hey mr griffin who was too poor to get a transcript the government didn't make him full but it was  party the supreme court that right there is harassment it's not the government harassing them but because of that harassment the government can't continue to impose the disclosure requirements so that's what we're talking about here given the or you have to get a specific piece of paper that provided by the secretary of state that was guided and so on that the campaign provides to you and so and then once you've done that and then have to go and get unauthorized so that there was a gracious  declaration so a declaration is signed under penalty of perjury that holmes actually provided to the secretary of state in the normal course the secretary of state approved that form as they did with mr on and then that was used by the campaign and until the  so in this case the important things to remember is that which rights are at issue that we are talking about to sign and a right to circulate it's not about access to the ballot it's not about success at the ballot or anything like that and the point they have now been over three hundred deaths from carbon in arkansas all and they only twenty five thousand people have contracted the disease and sadly things that are only getting worse without the relief from the district court mrs gray and  the st amendment plays this response here makes clear that what they're cleaning is a legal right to effective speech in other words they're saying that the person in guarantees them the right to speak w procedure and that's the right that they're claiming here there is no right to successfully initiate legislation petitions circulating in this instance signing are protected in so far as they involve expression but plaintiffs  the nd half of dover as this read where after the supreme court determined that there was a st amendment right implicated in that case it spoke very highly of the state's anti fraud interest in the petitioning process so i think th and plaintiffs are incorrect to undervalue arkansas doing time for our interests here is or century order byron's let me not be any evidence of fraud because they've been in effect for so long so it's unclear what would happen without them and finally on the burden we appreciate your appearance and briefing and arguments before us today case will be submitted and d cited in due course hopefully as soon as we possibly can so thank you for your  complete our docket for the day yes it does your honor in that case the court will be in recess until further call of the court thank you