Ballot petitions, Sherwood, and organizing Arkansas from the ground up

In 2023, after the LEARNS Act was passed, Kelly worked alongside her husband, Steve, as he launched the referendum petition to place LEARNS on the ballot. The effort had two goals: first, to let Arkansans vote on whether that law should stand—because how the state spends education dollars is a financial decision big enough that Kelly believed it belonged with the people at the ballot box, whether you were for the act or against it. Second, to use the ballot-initiative process to help organize the state—from the neighborhood up.

The year that followed, Kelly helped lead coordination to bring resources to petitioners across Arkansas and to support volunteers statewide. They rented a small duplex in Sherwood to serve as a central hub: a place to pick up petitions, drop them off, connect with notaries, and keep the work organized so volunteers were not left to figure out the mechanics alone.

In the current cycle, the work has expanded to multiple statewide initiatives and to local campaigns—for example, efforts in Jacksonville aimed at changing at-large voting patterns with roots in Jim Crow–era structures. Through it all, the philosophy is consistent: help communities organize themselves locally, build a better place where you live first, then work together across counties, the state, and—when it makes sense—the country. The last several years have put that local-first muscle front and center.

Kelly is not personally circulating petitions this year so there is no fair question of bias in how she would administer the office—but she believes in the process: if the people of Arkansas want the question on the ballot, they should get to vote. She also believes we should work to limit corporate and dark money in initiative politics—ideally keeping citizen-led work volunteer-centered so that money and paid interests do not, once again, outweigh people’s power and rights in a process meant to belong to the public.