Nevada County elections monitored by state, no complaints
State Board of Election Commissioners Director Chris Madison (left) leads a meeting in Little Rock on Dec. 11, 2024, while Secretary of State John Thurston acts as chairman. (Mary Hennigan/Arkansas Advocate)
Courtesy of Arkansas Advocate
LITTLE ROCK- The State Board of Election Commissioners voted recently to send complaints for violations of state election law to seven of the 11 Arkansas counties that were monitored during the 2024 general election.
Details of those complaints are protected under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act for several months until sanctions are distributed or a public hearing is scheduled, SBEC Director Chris Madison said.
However, members of the SBEC discussed reports from state election monitors before they officially became complaints. Problems ranged from a misspelling of “supreme” on ballots in Crawford County to alleged issues with precinct assignments and poll closures in Izard County.
Election monitors, who ensure procedures are being appropriately followed, were also present in Crittenden, Jefferson, Monroe, Nevada, Ouachita, Phillips, Searcy, Sebastian and Union counties.
The SBEC did not identify which counties would be sent complaints, but the reports from Crawford, Crittenden, Monroe and Nevada were not turned into complaints.
Regarding Izard County, Madison said the board would have a “vested interest in their success” like they did in Phillips County, where officials struggled to report results in 2022.
“[Izard County] has a city that has two very engaged factions, and Hatfields and McCoys kind of comes to mind,” Madison said. “This is an outcropping of that. … I’ve discussed it with staff, and this is going to be one of our focus areas.”
Madison said the opposing sides have created distrust in the community, and the presence of the state monitors, “cut down a lot of that” during November’s election.
Submitting complaints is one element of the SBEC’s post-election procedures. While Wednesday’s complaints stemmed from state monitor reports, they can also develop from citizen-filed complaints and submissions to the attorney general’s election hotline.
Sending more state monitors to more polling locations — this year a group of 11 monitors visited 60 spots — is more expensive, but Madison said it’s helpful to see if the same issues are occurring across different counties.
“One of the benefits of having this many monitors out is if I see the same thing happening in multiple counties, then that’s a systematic procedure issue,” Madison said. “If we’ve got a trap for them, we’ve got to fix the trap.”
While discussing complaints, Madison also referenced instances where residents who were not registered to vote filed provisional ballots that were counted in the electronic DS200 tabulator.
“I want to refer each of those cases to law enforcement because an unregistered person voted illegally,” he said. “They were not registered to vote, they shouldn’t have voted.”
Commissioner Sharon Brooks said that the SBEC will have hundreds of these instances, but Madison told reporters after the meeting that he knew of an estimated 20 cases across the state.
When asked if Madison would support a policy that allowed residents to register to vote on Election Day, he said the thought “gives me absolute heartburn” because of the required paperwork and Arkansas’ rural connectivity issues.
Random election audits
The SBEC on Wednesday also randomly selected the next round of counties to have their election audited.
In addition to a selection of counties from each of the state’s congressional districts and counties with more than 100,000 residents, members also created a category of counties that didn’t receive a 100% score on their previous audit.
Searcy County, the only location in Arkansas to hand count ballots during the 2024 primary and general elections, was chosen for the latter category. It was also the only county to have less than a 100% score on its previous audit.
Other counties to be audited include Benton, Faulkner, Marion, Lawrence, Izard, Mississippi, Poinsett, Van Buren, White, Crawford, Logan, Hot Spring, Newton, Howard and Pike.
Legislative goals
The Arkansas Legislature will convene in January, and Madison outlined 10 proposals he hoped to present for the upcoming session.
Among those was a law to require identification cards for people assisting voters, an extension to the election complaint file period, a requirement that any county with less than 100% accuracy on its audit be audited in the next election and an increase to the number of nursing home employees assisting residents while voting from one to two.
No draft legislation stemming from the SBEC has been filed at this time.
Rep. David Whitaker, D-Fayetteville, filed a bill that would allow Arkansans who are aged 65 or older to vote with an absentee ballot.
Madison said the current system allows any resident to obtain an absentee ballot if they select they will be “unavoidably absent” on Election Day.