背景调查可能会阻止政治提案在阿肯色州进行。该提案与医疗诉讼有关，并将限制律师可以收取的费用以及在这种情况下可以奖励的损害赔偿。这是一项侵权改革措施，通过一份收到近 93,000 个签名的请愿书进入了阿肯色州 11 月的投票。如果得到选民的批准，该措施将有效地修改阿肯色州宪法。
根据阿肯色州民主党公报的报道，阿肯色州国务卿马克·马丁已经批准了 93,000 个签名，并将医疗侵权改革提案送交投票。但是，有几个团体试图阻止公众对该提案进行投票。其中一个团体“保护 AR 家庭委员会”最近对马丁部长办公室提起诉讼，指控请愿者在选票上非法获得了这项措施。
阿肯色州法律要求所有上门律师和拉票员通过阿肯色州警察局进行背景调查。由于没有背景调查的拉票员收集了一些提案请愿书的签名，因此诉讼辩称这些签名无效。
根据保护 AR 家庭委员会提起的诉讼，缺少对拉票员的背景调查并不是医疗侵权改革提案的唯一问题。该诉讼还辩称，请愿书上的一些签名缺少有关签名者的关键信息。例如，一些签名不附有街道地址。
最终，保护 AR 家庭委员会的诉讼称，根据州法律，请愿书的 95,000 个签名中多达 35,000 个可能无效。如果没有这 35,000 个签名，该措施将无法在今年 11 月的阿肯色州投票中合法获得批准。对于 2016 年的选举，获得州选票的请愿书至少需要 85,859 个签名。
这项在阿肯色州被称为“问题 4”的措施是由阿肯色州的医疗保健服务赞助的。这个由医生、药剂师和其他医疗保健行业人士组成的公共利益团体率先提出了该措施的请愿程序。该团体在请愿书中扮演的角色之一是雇用并支付收集了 93,000 个签名的拉票员。该组织表示，在收集签名之前，它已经通过了所有必要的步骤来审查和认证游说者。
According to a report from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Arkansas Secretary of State Mark Martin already approved the 93,000 signatures and sent the medical tort reform proposal to the ballot. However, there are several groups trying to keep the public from voting on the proposal. One of those groups, the "Committee to Protect AR Families”, recently filed a lawsuit against Secretary Martin's office alleging that petitioners got the measure on the ballot illegally.
Arkansas law requires that all door-to-door solicitors and canvassers pass a background check through the Arkansas State Police. Since canvassers without background checks collected some of the signatures for proposal petition, the lawsuit argues that those signatures are not valid.
Missing background checks for canvassers wasn’t the only problem with the medical tort reform proposal according to the lawsuit filed by the Committee to Protect AR Families. The lawsuit also argues that some of the signatures on the petition are missing key information about the signees. For instance, some of the signatures are not accompanied by street addresses.
Ultimately, the Committee to Protect AR Families lawsuit says that as many as 35,000 of the petition's 95,000 signatures may not be valid under state law. Without those 35,000 signatures, the measure would not legally be allowed on the Arkansas ballot this November. For the 2016 election, petitions to get on the state ballot required a minimum of 85,859 signatures.
The measure—known around Arkansas as "Issue 4"—was sponsored by Health Care Access for Arkansas. This public interest group made up of doctors, pharmacists, and other people in the healthcare industry spearheaded the petition process for the measure. One of the roles the group played in the petition was hiring and paying the canvassers who collected the 93,000 signatures. The group says that it went through all of the necessary steps to vet and certify the canvassers before collecting signatures.
