Some election officials are reporting low turnout in the primaries for local, state and national representatives. Early voting is open at two locations in the county until May 23 for the May 24 preferential primary election. St. Elizabeth Catholic Church on Passion Play Rd. in Eureka Springs and the Carroll County Airport on County Road 308 west of Berryville from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. The last day of early voting is from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. May 23.
There are six vote centers in the county for the May 24 election open from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. – Holiday Island, Eureka Springs, Berryville, Green Forest, Oak Grove, and Osage.
Arkansas ranked last in the country in voter turnout in the 2020 election, and traditionally turnout is lower in primary than general elections.
Arkansas is heavily Republican, with about two-thirds of voters casting ballots for Donald Trump in 2020. Arkansas’s U.S. congressional delegation is Republican and the state legislature has a majority of Republicans. That has led some independents and Democrats to vote in the Republican primary in order to select more moderate candidates. Voters are allowed to choose the Democratic, Republican or nonpartisan judicial ballot regardless of party affiliation.
Some early voters were confused by the ballots. Eureka Springs School Board’s Al Larson questioned why his name was not on the ballot as he is running for re-election. It is the first year that the Eureka School Board members have run in geographic zones. Larson said because the school district hit a threshold of minority residents, the law required them to go to zones. Five directors are elected from zones, and two are at-large positions.
“It seems they are trying to have the positions be equitable,” Larson said. “More power to them.”
Larson was concerned he might be on the school board with no votes, but County Clerk Connie Doss explained that none of the school board members in Eureka Springs, Berryville or Green Forest are in contested races. She said that according to state law, the county Board of Elections Commission shall not place the name of unopposed candidates for school district directors on the ballot during a school board election held concurrently with preferential primary election or general election.
“School board members are in by acclamation,” Doss said. “They are unopposed. They’re in. They won.”
Larson accepted the explanation about school board members but didn’t understand why there were a number of people listed as unopposed candidates who were not in his district. He had one choice to vote for all the uncontested candidates on the Republican ballot.
“Not only did I have the opportunity to vote for an unopposed state representative who is not in my district, but most of the quorum court candidates were not in my district,” Larson said. “There was a whole group of people I’m not supposed to be voting for, but I could. It may make it look like unopposed candidates had more votes than they have voters in their district. Computers should be able to slice and dice exactly who should be on your ballot and not just a laundry list of unopposed candidates that we are expected to either approve or not.”
Doss said they worked with 66 different ballot faces, 22 for Republicans, 22 for Democrats and 22 for nonpartisans. She said that many different people are involved in making sure the ballots are accurate.
“Believe me, the Election Commission, Election Coordinator Sherry Eifling, our election staff member, Laura McGuire, and I have gone through all of these several times,” Doss said. “Every once in a while, human error enters in, but through proofing the ballots, receiving the draft of the ballots and checking them again, and then seeing the final ballot and checking them yet again, we always aim to catch those pesky errors that can happen even with the best of intentions to not have them. This is also the reason for L & A testing [logic and accuracy], which is open to the public. L&A testing is there to make sure that the machines are all functioning as they should and ballots are being counted as they should. The company gives us a test deck of ballots, but we add many more to it for the sake of making double sure that everything is performing as it should.”
Doss recommends people look at their ballots before going to the polls, and said Voterview.org is a great resource. People type in their names and birth dates to pull up their voter information and sample ballots assigned to them (based on their home address in the county).
“If they have a printer available, they can print that ballot off and even take it with them when they vote,” Doss said. “Some find this very helpful, especially those who have a love/hate relationship with electronics. Another thing that you might put out there is that voters are given three opportunities for correcting a ballot. Let’s say someone checks in and they choose the nonpartisan ballot or the poll worker hits the wrong button (it happens), the voter will go to the Express Vote (the machine that has the ballots loaded on it and is essentially a big, black, magic marker), the barcode that is printed on the top of the blank ballot (activator card), pulls up the ballot and this is not the ballot intended by the voter. He/she/they ask for assistance and we ‘spoil’ the ballot and issue the ballot intended. They get two ‘spoils.’
“Another case that comes up is when someone inadvertently hits the button for the wrong candidate and doesn’t realize it. When the ballot is printed off, the voter should always take a look at that paper ballot and check that all of their votes are on it correctly. If they aren’t for any reason, we go back to the ‘spoiled’ ballot. Once that ballot – good, bad, or ugly – goes in the DS200 Tabulator (the big rolling square), it is too late and there is absolutely nothing that any of us can do. Once it goes in that tabulator, we have no way of knowing which voter voted which of the ballots in the box. The machine stays sealed at all times.”