HB1532: Revisiting the 2006 voting problems

During the interim, I keep files of newspaper clippings and notes from conversations to remember during the session for potential legislation. Last month, I pulled a June, 2006 article from the stack written by Daniel Nasaw with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that outlined the voting problems we encountered in the state last year, partially because of current state law.

I can't find that article online, and to keep from running afoul of their copyright, I'll simply summarize it by noting that Nasaw interviewed several county election commissioners that faulted current law for many of the ballot and voting problems associated with the election (particularly the primary runoffs). The main problems with the current law are as follows:

1. Current law mandates that we hold a runoff election three weeks after the primary election (Ark. Code Ann. § 7-7-203);

2. Current early voting laws require that voting must be available to all voters 15 days before any election (Ark. Code Ann. § 7-5-418);

3. Additionally, counties must allow 10 days after the primary election for overseas, absentee and military ballots to arrive and be counted.

If you pull a calendar, you'll see that it is literally impossible to certify the primary election before early voting starts in the runoff. Even without taking No. 3 above into consideration, that gives electioneers six days to certify the election and prepare ballots/software for runoff voting. Throw in the problems we encountered with ES&S, the company retained by the state to supply voting equipment, and you can see why we had the problems we did with improvised (or no) early voting in some counties.

HB1532 (click here) attempts to revise the Election Code to assist county election commissioners by extending the runoff period to four weeks from three, and it also shortens the early voting period from 15 days to 14. I know this isn't perfect, and candidates are likely to frown at the thought of an extra week of campaigning and spending valuable money for advertising and airtime. Still, Arkansas apparently has the shortest window in the nation between a preferential primary and the start of runoff voting. I'm open to suggestions to make this a better bill, but I think we can all agree that something needs to be done to avert what could be a Florida-style crisis in the future.