Mark Martin Fails Again

Secretary of State Mark Martin is in the news again, and based on his previous controversies and missteps, you know that is never a good thing.

In a column this week, Roy Ockert, editor for the Jonesboro Sun, took Martin and his office to task for not fulfilling an extremely basic function of the office – providing the public with details on elections.  Ockert’s column notes that the official Secretary of State website has little to no information on the 2012 election.  From reviewing the Secretary of State’s election division website, it’s like they’ve forgotten there’s an election this year.

From Ockert’s column:

The main Elections Division page also includes a tab for the elections website votenaturally.org, set up by the previous secretary of state, Charlie Daniels. Follow that tab, and you’ll come to another page headed by this link: “Questions about the Nov. 2, 2010, General Election and Nonpartisan Judicial Runoff Election?” Choose that link, and you can download a 1-page document summarizing the 2010 election.

Other tabs on the page will take you to pages on which you can determine where you should have voted in 2010, give you a more detailed calendar for 2010, allow you to look up candidates on the 2010 ballots or read the ballot issues for 2010. You can also look up results for some past elections, but curiously not for the election of 2010.

Nowhere else could I find new information for the election of 2012, and yet my wall calendar indicates this is January 2012. Some of the many candidate forms available in 2010 may still be useful for this year, and you may still be able to register through the SOS website. At least you can determine whether you’re already registered.

You can read Ockert’s entire column here.

How incompetent must you be to not update an official website with basic election information? Once again, Mark Martin is falling down on the job.