Runoff elections answer the question: Who wants it most?
Which candidate? Whose family and friends? Which voters?
These elections generally depend on the intensity of the candidate and the loyalty of friends and family who coax a relative handful of voters to show up and weigh in on an election.
For more casual voters, Arkansas’ primary elections were essentially over on March 1, when this state considered choices for president as well as for statewide, district and local offices.
The turnout was comparatively decent then, although well below the numbers of registered voters.
In Benton and Washington counties, where just shy of 252,400 are registered to vote, the combined turnout fell just short of 100,600.
Remember, there were Republican and Democratic races for president, the U.S. Senate, the state Legislature, county and district offices on those partisan ballots as well as some nonpartisan judicial races, including a hot one for chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court to be decided on March 1.
Still, just more than 40 percent of Benton County’s registered voters turned out. In Washington County, a bit more than 39 percent showed up.
Not all of those who voted then showed up for the leftover races that remained last week. Not by a long shot.
That big March 1 ballot attracted almost 53,500 voters in Benton County’s Republican and Democratic primaries. The combined turnout in Washington County was 47,100.
By comparison, fewer than 9,400 turned out for the lone runoff in Benton County and just more than 1,300 in Washington County, where Republicans decided one race and Democrats another.
Both were huge drop-offs from the March 1 turnout.
The reason more showed up in Benton County is simple. They were choosing the Republican nominee for sheriff in a county that typically elects Republicans to county office. And this particular office is engulfed in controversy right now because the sitting sheriff, Kelley Cradduck, faces criminal charges. Voters rejected his bid for re-election on March 1.
The race isn’t completely over. Tuesday’s winner, Shawn Holloway, will face an independent, Glenn Latham, in November’s general election.
But Tuesday’s vote was huge in terms of its impact. It mattered not so much in terms of the numbers of voters participating but the likelihood that a relative handful of people may have effectively chosen the next sheriff.
Holloway, a major in the sheriff’s office now, got just 5,849 votes to best another Republican, Paul Pillaro, a lieutenant in the Lowell Police Department, who got 3,488 votes.
Granted, local officials were excited by what was a relatively strong turnout for a primary runoff. But those 9,337 voters represent something like 7 percent of the county’s registered voters. That’s not a lot to brag about.
It was far worse, however, in Washington County, where a state legislative seat and a constable’s post were on the runoff ballots, respectively, for Republicans and Democrats.
Because these are district races, the potential voting base was much smaller for each.
So look just at the comparative votes from March 1 to see how few voters participated.
In the House District 88 race, roughly 4,000 Republicans cast votes on March 1, when there was a three-way race to replace a Republican state representative who ran successfully for a state Senate seat this year.
Clint Penzo of Springdale edged Issac Foley by just 38 votes on March 1 as the two of them secured runoff berths, eliminating Phil Humbard.
Again, about 4,000 voted then. On Tuesday, when this was the only runoff in Arkansas for a legislative seat and one in which the winner will face no Democrat in November, just over 1,200 voted.
That comparative handful of voters effectively picked District 88’s next state representative, Penzo got 692 votes to Foley’s 505 on Tuesday.
This was a significant election, decided by a 187-vote win margin.
As for the lone Democratic runoff in either of the two counties, only 107 voters even turned out. It was for Washington County constable, a post which typically is more interesting to the candidates than to voters at large.
Nickel Potter won the runoff with 61 votes, just 20 more than William (Billy) Harris’ 41 votes.
But the two of them and Gene Allen Franco III, who was eliminated, collectively got just shy of 6,000 votes in the March 1 vote.
As it turned out, all three of these runoff elections had something in common.
The Benton County sheriff nominee, the state legislative candidate and the Washington County constable winner all won with much less participation in the runoff than in the preferential primary.
Each also led the ballot in their respective races on March 1, which means they got the plurality of votes then.
It might not be a bad idea for Arkansas to reassess the use of runoffs to decide primaries with multiple candidates, at least in the lower-level offices.
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Brenda Blagg is a freelance columnist and longtime journalist in Northwest Arkansas. Email her at [email protected] .