From left: State Board of Election Commissioners director Chris Madison, Saline County Clerk Doug Curtis, County Election Coordinator Allison Cain and County Judge Matt Brumley address the Arkansas Legislature's Joint City, County and Local Affairs Committee at the Hot Springs Convention Center on Wednesday, August 7, 2024. (Tess Vrbin/Arkansas Advocate)
Saline and Garland county officials told Arkansas lawmakers Wednesday that they have full confidence in the way they conduct elections, specifically the use of voting machines instead of hand-counted paper ballots, and decried the right-wing talking point that any elections have been “stolen.”
The Joint City, County and Local Affairs Committee continued a discussion started by the Joint Performance Review Committee in June, in which Searcy County election officials said they had learned from the problems that arose from their first time hand-counting paper ballots in the March primary elections.
Searcy, Saline and Garland counties were among the 15 the State Board of Election Commissioners randomly selected to audit from three pools of counties based on population, and Searcy County was the only one where auditors found problems with the way elections had been conducted, board director Chris Madison said.
Auditors found discrepancies between the numbers of ballots counted by hand and those tabulated by the voting machines, Madison wrote in a June memo to lawmakers. Additionally, some ballots from one precinct were included in a pile with ballots from another precinct, and other ballots were printed on the incorrect type of paper and would not scan through the voting tabulator, he wrote.
Saline County officials repeated their statements from June that using machines to count votes leads to more accurate and secure results than hand-counting ballots.
“I find myself a little embarrassed [about] how much time is spent trying to project what a slower, less efficient, more expensive and less accurate system would cost our taxpayers and the security of the elections of the people of our state when we have one that is evidence-based to be 100% [accurate] and fiscally responsible,” Saline County Judge Matt Brumley said.
When you insert more and more human beings, you’ve just got to understand what your tolerance for error is going to be. Ours is zero percent.
– Saline County Judge Matt Brumley
Sen. Kim Hammer, R-Benton, represents part of Saline County and is both co-chair of the Joint Performance Review Committee and a member of the City, County and Local Affairs Committee. Hammer asked both state and county election officials if they were aware of any “stolen” elections in their professional experience, and he said a billboard in Saline County raises this suspicion.
Saline County Clerk Doug Curtis said elections have “absolutely not” been stolen and a billboard should not be “casting doubt upon elections.” He said he was “thrown out of” the Saline County Republican Party for defending the integrity of the current election process.
“It’s time to end this bull,” Curtis said, receiving applause from the audience.
Madison, SBEC election administration supervisor Charlie Morris and Garland County Election Coordinator Gene Haley all agreed that elections have not been stolen.
The Donald Trump-connected Arkansas Voter Integrity Initiative has been engaged in ongoing efforts to convince counties statewide to trade voting machines for paper ballots. Cleburne County agreed to do so in January 2023 but later reversed the decision .
In April, the Arkansas Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit filed by AVII and its CEO, Conrad Reynolds, that argued voting machines do not comply with state law.
Arkansas Supreme Court affirms circuit court decision in voting machine lawsuit
Logistical issues
Brumley and his Garland County counterpart, Darryl Mahoney, both said it would be difficult to find enough people to hand-count ballots in their respective counties.
“When you insert more and more human beings, you’ve just got to understand what your tolerance for error is going to be,” Brumley said. “Ours is zero percent.”
He also said the cost of renting space and providing tables, food, and ballot printers for the team of people counting ballots would be prohibitive.
Act 350 of 2023 , which Hammer sponsored, requires counties that switch to paper ballots to pay the associated costs themselves .
The Searcy County Quorum Court voted in late 2023 to hand-count ballots, though voting machines are still available for voters with certain disabilities or for anyone who wants to use them, county election commission Chairwoman Laura Gross said in June.
Gross said computers in voting machines could be hacked and manipulated, but Jon Davidson, SBEC’s educational services manager, said this is not true.
Arkansas election officials debate voting machines vs. hand-counted paper ballots
Gross and other Searcy County election officials also said the cost of repairing or replacing faulty voting machines would be too high for the county in the long term.
The Secretary of State’s office maintains a contract to fix election equipment so counties do not have to foot the bill, said Leslie Bellamy, the office’s director of elections.
Bellamy told lawmakers Wednesday that she contacted all 75 counties after the June legislative hearing to make sure all election officials were aware that they are not responsible for repairing election equipment.
One of the changes Searcy County officials will make to its ballot-counting process in upcoming elections is that they will base the hand count on the data tallied by voting machines, which they did not do last time, Madison said Wednesday.
Voter turnout is expected to be higher in November than it was in the primaries, and Rep. Howard Beaty, R-Crossett, said Searcy County needed to keep this in mind.
“I’m all for the local option and the decision of the county and the residents as far as how they conduct their elections, but my concern is, with the paper ballot side… those procedures are going to have to be tightened up and those errors can’t happen,” Beaty said.
Brumley said Saline County citizens have been “enthusiastically concerned” about election security since shortly after he took office in 2023, and he told people when and where the state’s audit earlier this year would take place so they could witness the process firsthand.
“One person showed up, and he’s testifying in front of you today,” Brumley said.
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