Cook: Craighead Co. Election Commission Asks For Special Session To Fix Voter ID Law

As many have predicted, the new Voter ID law has already led to Arkansans losing their constitutional right to vote in an election.

In the recent State Senate election in Jonesboro, roughly 63 Arkansans’ votes were not counted since they sent in absentee ballots which did not include any identification. The Craighead County Election Commission grappled with what to do with these ballots, but fortunately, or unfortunately, the special election vote was not close so these ballots would have not effected the election.

To further add to the confusion, Secretary of State Mark Martin and the Arkansas Board of Election Commissioners gave conflicting rulings on how to deal with these absentee ballots.

The Board believed the absentee votes should not be counted, but Secretary of State Mark Martin believed voters should be allowed to bring their ID in to be verified and their absentee ballot would be counted.

In short, it’s a mess.

Today the Craighead County Election Commission sent a letter to various legislative leaders, along with Mike Beebe and Mark Martin, asking them to fix the problem in a special session at the conclusion of the upcoming fiscal session.

From their letter:

In our election, the election-day vote difference between the two candidates was greater than the number of absentee votes cast. So regardless of how the absentee voters voted the outcome remained the same. But on the horizon are our 2014 primary and general elections. And in these elections, it’s foreseeable that absentee voters could decide some contested races. If so, who – the Board or the Secretary – expresses the correct legal interpretation of the General Assembly’s intent? Without clarification, Arkansas’s 75 county election commissions are left to decide. And if they aren’t uniform in their interpretations, absentee ballots in different counties could be treated differently.

To treat voters from different counties differently is wrong. This is a foreseeable problem. But fortunately it’s a preventable problem too. We urge a brief special legislative session to take place at the end of the upcoming fiscal session to adopt legislation to solve this problem.

The Pulaski County Election Commission is meeting this Thursday to discuss this same problem.

Sadly, under the new Voter ID law, many more Arkansans votes likely won’t be counted in the upcoming primary and general election.