Elections in Arkansas are secure and reliable, state and county officials told state legislators in Hot Springs yesterday.
The topic has been a hot one in solidly red Arkansas, where Donald Trump’s 2020 stop-the-steal rhetoric took hold and hasn’t let go. A small but loud chorus of activists continues to call for a return to hand-counting paper ballots instead of relying on machines to tally votes.
The paper ballots issue is a divisive one for Arkansas Republicans, who are known for supporting laws making it harder to register to vote and cast ballots, but who seem split on the best method to tally the ballots from voters who successfully run the gauntlet.
On Wednesday, state legislators heard from Saline and Garland county officials who said their counties’ elections are fair. The officials defended their use of voting machines to count ballots accurately and quickly, according to a report by Josh Snyder in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette today.
Their strong defenses come as some people have raised concerns about the integrity of the state’s elections, notably Conrad Reynolds, who leads the nonprofit Arkansas Voter Integrity Initiative. The group’s website says that voting machines are “incompatible with free and fair elections” and urges Arkansans to contact their county elected officials to switch to paper ballots.
Reynolds has also said there is “no question” the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. Reynolds appeared in a social media post with Trump last year, saying that the former president was saying “thumbs up to paper ballots.”
Despite Trump’s claims, hand-counting ballots has been shown to be slow, error-prone and less accurate.
In a phone call with the Arkansas Times today, Chris Madison, the director of the state Board of Election Commissioners, said the state’s voting machines work properly and described in detail all of the steps his agency takes to audit results.
Most counties use tabulator machines to count election results, but quorum courts in Searcy and Cleburne Counties have voted to move to paper ballots. Cleburne County later reversed its decision.
Madison set the record straight on the term “paper ballots,” which is a bit of a misnomer. Many counties use paper ballots that are fed into a tabulator machine that counts the votes. In Searcy County, the paper ballots are counted by hand instead of using a tabulator, he said.
In Pulaski County, early voters mark their ballots on a screen and can double-check their ballot before its cast. On election day, Pulaski County voters use paper ballots that are placed into a tabulator machine, Madison said.
A state review of this year’s primary election results in Searcy County found discrepancies that the state Board of Election Commissioners could not reconcile, the Arkansas Advocate reported in June.
Madison said he has not seen errors with the tabulators.
“The tabulators count correctly. That’s what they’re designed to do,” Madison said by phone today.
Earlier this year, the state Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that found the use of voting machines does not violate state law. Reynolds had brought the suit based on the barcodes the machines use, the Arkansas Advocate said in April.
At Wednesday’s meeting in Hot Springs, state Rep. Kim Hammer (R-Benton) raised the issue of a billboard in Saline County that says “tired of elections being stolen?” and asked the election officials on hand if they were familiar with any Arkansas elections being stolen. Madison said he had not, the Democrat-Gazette reported.
Saline County Clerk Doug Curtis did not mince words. He said the billboard “appalls me,” because it casts doubt on the elections. Curtis received applause from those in attendance when he described how he has been treated as an election worker, the Democrat-Gazette report said.
Saline County Judge Matt Brumley and Garland County Judge Darryl Mahoney spoke against hand-counted paper ballots. Brumley cited the cost and time involved and Mahoney said it would also be difficult to hire enough people to count the ballots by hand, the newspaper reported.