COMMENTARY: County Flirts With Disaster

By DOUG THOMPSON <a href="mailto:dthompson@nwaonline.

Posted: November 22, 2009 at 2:54 a.m.

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Benton County is seriously considering going to all-electronic voting. At least their election commission chairman is.

This is a particularly terrible idea at a uniquely awful time.

I know chairman Bill Williams.

I like him. He’s a progressive soul. I have no doubt he has nothing but the very best of good intentions.

I just think the road to hell he wants to pave here is straight, wide, short and laid along a downward slope of pronounced steepness.

We have an nationally important U.S. Senate race coming up next year. The Democrats are trying to hang on to a large majority. The Republicans are trying to break up Democratic one-party rule.

Well, to be accurate, something that’s as close to one-party rule as you can get when it’s the Democrats in charge. Polls say that Sen. Blanche Lincoln, the state’s Democratic incumbent, is vulnerable.

Benton County will matter a great deal in this election, for a Republican can’t win without Benton County coming out strong for him.

I can just see the eyes of the nation and the world focused upon the Benton County courthouse. The computers blink and whir. Out comes the result.

And the winner is: Al Franken.

Franken, you may recall, is the eventual winner of a U.S. Senate race in Minnesota that took 246 days to sort out.

I’d have a lot more confidencethat this wouldn’t happen if Benton County could get through one election without serious problems. My favorite of the numerous examples I could cite here is 2006. That, as I recall, was the year when Benton County voter turnout was a good 20 or more points greater than anywhere else in the state, according to their tally of votes.

This is also the year - as I vividly recall - when somebody trying to sort out the vote put the computer’s electronic records in the back seat of a car and drove them to Little Rock to get the computer company to do it.

All the election results should have been thrown out after that.

Look, Benton County needs more electronic voting machines. Critics of going paperless are quick to point out that 37 percent of the county’s voters demanded paper ballots in the last election.

I’m sure the fiasco in 2006 contributed to that. I’m also sure, however, that long lines to the machines contributed to that too. Voting on paper was simply faster during the peak times.

I hate to see the issue of filling a legitimate need for moremachines get tangled up in what now could be perceived as a referendum on paperless voting.

Buy more machines, but keep the paper option. I don’t think the county could convert to paperless voting in 2010 if it tried anyway. Let’s hope they don’t try. After all, we have a sevenway (so far) Republican primary for the Senate in May. Even if some of those candidates are winnowed out before then, a few votes here and a few votes there could easily decide who makes the runoff in this vital race, ultimately deciding the outcome.

Have adequate computerized voting machines this year. Then we’ll all find out who really wants paper ballots once they can get to a machine without waiting in line. We’ll also find out if a more automated process fixes more problems than it causes.

Who knows? After a smooth election or two, Benton County voters might go paperless on their own.

One last thing; somebody could argue that every election is vital and that my argument on timing is not valid. Consider the 2012 election. Presumably, the president will be running for a second term. We will have no Senate races on the ballot. There won’t be a governor’s race either.

That will be in 2010.

I don’t think we’ll all be breathless with suspense in 2012 over how the president will do in Benton County, where he was trounced in 2008.

DOUG THOMPSON IS EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR.

Opinion, Pages 9 on 11/22/2009

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