The New York Times reports today that Arkansas is the third-hardest place to vote among the states.
The findings are part of the 2022 edition of the Cost of Voting Index, a nonpartisan academic study that seeks to cut through the politics of voting access. The study ranks all 50 states based on the overall investment a resident must make, in time and resources, to vote.
Researchers focused on 10 categories related to voting, including registration, inconvenience, early voting, polling hours and absentee voting.
The two categories given the most weight, according to Scot Schraufnagel, a political scientist at Northern Illinois University and an author of the study, were ease of registration to vote and the availability of early voting, both in person and by mail. The study’s emphasis on early-voting options meant that states like Washington and Oregon, where voting is conducted entirely by mail, ended up at the top of the rankings.
This news comes coincidentally on a day in which a legislative committee heard from state Rep. Stephen Meeks on his study of other ways to “improve” voting in Arkansas. One idea was something akin to a bar code (a “unique identifier) on absentee ballots to make sure the ballot was voted by the person who requested it. Even some devoted Republican vote suppressors in the meeting remarked that this might lead some to worry about the constitutionally protected secrecy of the ballot. Meeks acknowledged this would be a concern. He also said he’d looked into biometrics, or facial recognition, as an added voter security feature (a little early for this yet, he said.)
This link will take you to a discussion beginning at 10:03 a.m.
You’ll be treated to comments bragging about all the vote suppression legislation passed in the last regular legislative session. You’ll hear the secretary of state’s office praise efforts to limit the number of votes that can be gathered by others for counting and skepticism about the encouragement of voting in the wrong sorts of nursing homes, which might lean in the wrong political direction. Meeks talked during the meeting of providing a means to allow voting machines in nursing homes.
There was praise during the meeting for the benefits of legislative insistence on voter ID laws and signature matching (voodoo election science). What you won’t hear is encouragement for easier registration, drop boxes, mobile voting or online voting. The fewer voters the better, particularly if minorities and the poor find it more difficult, is the Arkansas Republican view.