Former Supreme Court Justice Tom Glaze Dies At 74

Former Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Tom Glaze, who had a distinguished legal and judicial career, has died at the age of 74.

The Arkansas Times’ Ernie Dumas reports that Glaze died from complications of Parkinson’s and Lewy body disease.

Glaze served as a chancellor and on the Arkansas Court of Appeals before he was elected to the state’s highest court in 1986. He retired from the post in 2008.

Dumas noted other aspects of Glaze’s early career when he fought against voting fraud in earlier era in Arkansas politics.

Glaze came to the public’s attention in 1964 as a young law school graduate investigating voting fraud for a Winthrop Rockefeller-inspired outfit called the Election Research Council. He was so consumed by the fraud uncovered in that election that he devoted the next dozen years to fighting it and educating the public and officialdom about how elections should be conducted, for Rockefeller and then as deputy attorney general under Joe Purcell. He wrote the reformed election code that the legislature, to his dismay, stripped of real reforms and passed in 1969. Then he started an organization called The Election Laws Institute, which led him into pitched court battles in Conway County and several other counties over election fraud. It led to the demise of the Marlin Hawkins political machine in Conway County.

Last year, Glaze’s memoir, “Waiting for the Cemetery Vote,” was published. It focused on his work battling election fraud.

You can read more of Dumas’ memories at this link.