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LITTLE ROCK—Lt. Gov. Bill Halter said Tuesday that he’s gathered more than enough signatures necessary to place his proposed lottery on the November ballot as opponents said they haven’t ruled out the possibility of challenging the measure in court.

Kendra Bean, a freshman at Pulaski Technical College, signed the “symbolic” 77,468th signature on the proposed lottery, which will fund college scholarships. But Halter said his campaign already has more than that figure — the number of signatures needed to place it on the ballot — and planned to keep circulating petitions around the state before a July 7 deadline in the hopes of gathering 100,000 signatures.

“We are one step closer to providing higher education opportunities for Arkansas students to attend Arkansas colleges and universities,” Halter said at a news conference in front of the state Capitol. Halter has said the lottery will bring in $100 million annually for college scholarships.

It was unclear Tuesday whether the lottery proposal has met all of the requirements to appear on the ballot. The state also requires that signatures from at least 15 of the state’s 75 counties be submitted and that each of those counties’ petitions include signatures equal to at least 5 percent of the voters who cast a ballot in the governor’s race.

“I think we’re well on our way,” Halter said.

Officials from the Arkansas Family Council Action Committee, a conservative group that is opposed to the lottery measure, said they would continue campaigning against the proposal.

Jerry Cox, the committee’s director, said the group would do “everything it can” to fight the measure.

“If a legal challenge is appropriate, then we will do that, but we have no plans at this time to do one,” Cox told reporters. “But that’s just because we haven’t looked at it thoroughly enough to decide how exactly we would go about that legally.”