Panel Eyes Vote Changes

Commission Considers Increasing Availability Of Early Voting

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

— Benton County’s Election Commission is looking for early voting to play a larger role in the county’s election process.

The Election Commission agreed Monday to draft a letter to the Finance Committee of the Benton County Quorum Court to give a rough outline of their thoughts on how best to handle the county’s elections.

At A Glance

What’s Next

The Benton County Election Commission plans to submit a letter to the Finance Committee of the Benton County Quorum Court outlining the commission’s plans for changing the election process. The changes could require more staff and new equipment, which would have to be approved by the Benton County Quorum Court. The Quorum Court’s Finance Committee, acting as the Budget Committee, has completed work on the 2013 budget and is expected to approve the budget at its meeting today. The meeting is set for 5:30 p.m. in the Quorum Courtroom at the County Administration Building.

Source: Staff Report

“I don’t know how we do this in such a short window, but the Quorum Court needs to know the Election Commission has some recommendations,” said Commissioner Robbyn Tumey.

One of the initial points of emphasis agreed on by the Election Commission is to increase the availability of early voting, including adding additional sites apart from the three offices of the Benton County clerk. For the 2012 general election, the Election Commission approved three offsite early voting locations.

In conjunction with expanding early voting locations, the commissioners noted the county will need to buy additional computers and printers to operate those sites and hire additional poll workers to staff the polling places. The commissioners also said they plan to ask for additional full-time staff to handle the increasing election workload.

The commissioners agreed using more early voting sites will increase the county’s reliance on paper ballots on election days. Kim Dennison, election coordinator, explained electronic voting machines used during the early voting period can’t be used on election day. In 2012, Dennison said, the county used 57 electronic voting machines in the early voting period, leaving 197 available for election day voting.

The 2012 general election saw Benton County voters report problems with long lines at polling places and — in some precincts — an insufficient number of paper ballots. The county also had problems in counting votes when the three machines used to count paper ballots all failed during the counting process. The commissioners agreed the ballot counting problem was due at least in part to the length of the paper ballot and the need to fold the ballots three times to fit them into the ballot boxes.

Tumey said another possible solution might be to have two ballots when there is an unusually large number of ballot questions as there was in 2012.

Chairman John Brown said the commission may look at different ballot-counting machines, including some that count ballots at the precinct level. He said those machines are in use, but some problems have been reported in places where the machines have not counted ballots that have under-votes or over-votes on a ballot.

“I’m scared to death of those M-100 models if they kick them out for under- and over-voting,” Brown said. In some Benton County races at the Nov. 6 general election, there were thousands of undervotes.

Tumey agreed the technical issues could make those machines undesirable if they lengthen the time needed to vote.

“We could have a real bottleneck there,” Tumey said.

Sarah Daniels, Benton County comptroller, said the county’s 2013 budget is essentially set, with the Finance Committee expected to send it on for approval by the Quorum Court’s Committee of 13 when the committee meets Dec. 11, then to the full Quorum Court for final approval at the Dec. 20 meeting. Daniels said any requests for additional funding or new personnel for the Election Commission will likely be considered next year.

“If they have equipment they think is needed, there are monthly Finance Committee meetings where they can make those requests,” Daniels said. “Personnel requests are usually handled in midyear.”