COMMENTARY

Not Another Benton County Election Story

technologies of the voting business. Today, intelligent and well-trained people are required to deal with the challenges, yet as recently as 2009, Benton County had only one part-time employee whose sole job was elections. The Election Commissioners were expected to fill in the gap.

By 2011 the number had risen to two full-time and one part-time people, still short of what is needed.

Election commissioners are amateurs. They are in oft ce to set policy and testify to the verity of the election outcome. When they dabbleQUORUM COURT HAS FAILED TO INVEST IN MAKING THE VOTING PROCESS WORK SMOOTHLYIt is undeniable this General Election has been an embarrassment, if not a catastrophe, for Benton County, but before you go screaming for somebody’s head, there is much to consider:

  1. Benton County is the second largest in the state both in population and geographic size.

  2. Making an election simple, easy and convenient for the voter is a complex and dift cult task.

  3. The biggest elections happen only once every four years.

Benton County has lagged sorely behind the modern world in adapting to the increased complexity of thein the operational side of elections, they have great potential to inadvertently wreak havoc. The daily operations of an election commission need to be conducted by trained, experienced professionals who are responsible for the preparation and execution of an election within the policies set by the commissioners. That isn’t happening.

The monetary responsibility lies squarely on the shoulders of the Quorum Court. They have failed to make elections a priority in the county budget.

In 2010 the court refused to allow the commission to even apply for a $65,000federal grant that would have deeply improved tracking of all the technologies, from testing through ballot counting.

In big elections, there is a chronic shortage of competent poll workers;

many are very good at that job but others are simply not up to the task. Poll workers typically are only employed in a challenging job once or twice a year.

They come and go and worst of all, not all of them follow their training and instruction.

Other jurisdictions have similar problems and seem to handle them well. What can we learn from them?

First is that really smooth elections cost money.

If we want to make real improvement in Benton County, then we must look to better technologies, increased professional staff who are well trained and a change in attitude in the courthouse. There are several options open to us. We could adopt voting centers, an approach which would allow voters from any precinct to vote at any of several centralized locations that would be open for early voting as well as election day. This approach allows the concentration of both technological and personnel resources so that the inevitable problems are dealt with quickly and well. Another possibilitymight be to change our polling place technology so that everyone votes on paper ballots that are automatically counted at the polling place. Pulaski County has done this for years and it seems to serve their voters well.

Back to point one above: To fix it will cost money.

The problem is one that succumbs to just moderate analysis: What is missing is the lack of will on the part of the commission and the Quorum Court to step up to their responsibility and bite the bullet.

BILL WILLIAMS IS A FORMER MEMBER OF THE BENTON COUNTY ELECTION COMMISSION.

Opinion, Pages 15 on 11/11/2012

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