LITTLE ROCK — I’ll not spend time further haranguing the beleaguered Benton County Election Commission, or the county clerk for still counting ballots about a week after the November 6 election. What possible good would stating the obvious do?
I do believe everyone involved was likely doing the best they could to get thousands of understandably frustrated voters moved through the balloting process.
Lines were longer than long at various precincts. There weren’t enough paper ballots to satisfy the demand. Some precincts ran completely out of them. There were the perpetual problems with voting machines and apparently lots of questions about the whole voting process that day that apparently never got answered. People sometimes waited for hours simply to complete a ballot.
In the aftermath, as votes were still be counted nearly a week later, election commission chairman John Brown Jr. pledged that “there will be some changes made.” Brown told a reporter that the small election staff and three county officials responsible for managing elections didn’t figure on so many voters being interested in only one or a few races. Those who cast votes in some but not all races are considered to be casting “under votes.”
In the presidential race, there were only 447 of these under votes cast, according to a partial total as of last week. But that tally showed 4,402 under votes cast in the 3rd District U.S. House race, and 5,689 in the county judge’s race.
“A lot of people came out just to vote for president or in the wet-dry, medical marijuana or highway tax amendments,” Brown said. I suspect the same sort of thing happened in communities across our state.
It does my heart good to hear Brown say changes will be made on behalf of the citizens of Benton County. Some big changes and a wholesale revamping of the process and additional funding are necessary to keep up with this county that had what I’m told was the second-largest voter turnout in Arkansas. Benton County’s election commission and its staff deserves some smooth sailing after crashing onto the reefs of one craggy problem after another through several elections now.
You’ll notice I didn’t mention County Judge Bob Clinard. That’s because his office has nothing to do with elections. That is a baby that belongs solely to the election commission, which also is the body that will have to right this listing ship and get future elections running smoothly.
Although the straight-talking Clinard, who was handily re-elected, did say the election (as flawed as it was) overall adhered to state guidelines for managing elections, he said one problem seemed to be that the commission didn’t account for the large turnout that swelled likely because of two emotionally explosive ballot initiatives this time around, including the wet-dry issue and legalizing medical marijuana.
The judge also said he understood that while Benton County had the second largest voter turnout in the state, it was number one in the percentage of registered voters who actually showed up to cast a ballot.
Among other reforms, the three commissioners, in my view, need an infusion of dollars from their quorum court if badly needed reforms ever come to pass. In 2011, the budget for the commission was $276,000.
The election commission needs, at the very least, twice that amount to have enough resources to run an efficient public election. I also wonder if two election commission staff employees to man the office is sufficient, considering the myriad chronic problems.
I also believe it’s relevant to the latest meltdowns that at least 295 different ballot configurations were necessary for this year’s general election in Benton County.
One county official said that “printing and distributing that many paper ballots and guessing at how many were needed in each precinct would fill a semi-truck.”
Add the fact that the county’s number of voting precincts had been reduced by nearly a third and you had all the elements for a perfect storm of failures and inadequacies. And there’s some question about the location of some precincts that were kept.
Is the answer to pony up and buy even more voting machines? Perhaps. But there also is considerable public skepticism in the trustworthiness of these complex machines and all the inside knowledge that goes into preprogramming them.
Remember the story of those folks up north who on election day reportedly kept voting for one candidate, only to have their machines register their votes for his opponent? How can that even happen short of deliberate programming? I honestly don’t know.
And finally, it’s wise to remember that even when voters cast their preferences on paper ballots with pencils, even those votes wind up being counted by relatively complicated machines that also are fallible and known to break down at crucial times.
All I can say for certain is that some mighty big problems with voting remain in Benton County that a lot of residents believe need fixing, and the sooner the better.
As for me, well, I voted early. It only took a few minutes. Not a single line. And I left the table anything but frustrated.
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Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial, Pages 17 on 11/17/2012