Smooth, efficient election process seen in Sebastian County

story by Aric Mitchell
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Ask any poll worker or reporter covering elections in the Sebastian County Courthouse in Fort Smith and all will agree — Tuesday night’s primary did not feel like an election night.

Maybe it was the deathly silence of the lobby as a projector spit out new poll numbers every two minutes.

Maybe it was the lack of candidate representation at the facility, even as more returns came in.

Maybe it was the abundance of drinks and snacks left over in the counting room on the first floor of the Sebastian County Courthouse.

Whatever it was, Election Commission official David Harp wasn’t complaining.

“This is the best it’s ever been,” Harp said. “Once, about 10 or 12 years ago, we were here until 7:30 in the morning counting votes by hand. Hopefully, those days are over.”

Harp credits Sebastian County Election Coordinator Jerry Huff with the huge strides forward the process has seen in the last six years. That’s how long Huff has been training his team on use of the new technology.

For the first time ever, the Sebastian County website kept razor-sharp numbers in conjunction with the actual counting. Updates came through on the website every two minutes. The delay between the live numbers at the courthouse and what visitors of the site saw was only half that. Everything happened from the counting room. The process was instantaneous thanks to the efforts of Huff, who feels his crew deserves most of the credit.

“Our poll workers are the salt of the earth,” he explained. “They are the ones on the front lines of American democracy. They understand we are all here to serve the voters.”

And serve, they did.

Huff confirms Harp’s 7:30 nightmare and remembers a time when voting machine technology was new, and the courthouse possessed only one. During those days, the process could take until 1 am. Tuesday night saw that time sliced in half. With the last of the officials filtering out of the building and back to their cars a little after 10:30 pm., voters didn’t have to wait to see how it all played out.

VOTER TURNOUT
While efficiency was in, voter participation could have been better.

Final reports from the county show that out of 57,250 registered voters only 16,690 participated, or around 29 %. The Democrats showed 6,282 votes cast, while Republican turnout figured prominently with 10,353. Only 55 of the total votes were non-partisan.

Lack of participation played a role in the considerable amount of runoffs ahead, among them the high profile Democratic primary for Blanche Lincoln’s U.S. Senate seat, but Harp isn’t worried.

“We’ll just do it all over again in three weeks.”

With the entire Election Commission up for the challenge, it looks like June 8 could be another short night.